


Photophobic Encounters

by Plinkoid_Fics (daveaj)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Child Neglect, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 07:39:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 46,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3282347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daveaj/pseuds/Plinkoid_Fics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>==> Be the sad kid<br/>==> You; be the albino kid</p><p>Inabilities to RECOLLECT. Dreams of FREEDOM. Avoiding light, avoiding people, avoiding yourself. Growing up and simply acknowledging TRUE LOVE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a repost with permission. It was originally by former Tumblr/AO3 user Plinkoid. For more information on the author, go [here](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Daveaj/profile). The rating and tags may not be entirely accurate to what they were before, but I tried to account for any triggers I could find. If anyone leaves comments I will make sure the author sees them. Any notes after this point are the author's original notes.

** VI **

 

Your name is JOHN EGBERT.  You are SIX YEARS OLD.

//

You've been sitting here for quite a while now, but you can’t be bothered with just where you are anymore.  Mostly, your perspective consists of the rich hues of the summer sky and the clouds who dare drift through said sky.  There should definitely be something better to do and _surely_ you could occupy your time in more productive ways.  That said you are only really interested with that immense backdrop of radiant blue.

You had come here for a reason and you had definitely taken specific steps to arrive to this point.  Yet it has all escaped you, you are so happy with the shade of the sky, you are so happy with the wandering clouds.  The idea that you may be slightly LONELY has escaped you as well.

You are a child and all that matters is how the world is bursting with light. 

It is not until you pick up on a faint rustling, on the sure promise of an arriving person, presumably a child as well, that you do remember that there is more to the world than strictly your blossoming imagination.  You are gripped with that destabilizing feeling, the one that has constantly managed to seize you throughout your life, one indicating that you have not yet fulfilled the mission for which you BREATHE.

Exactly, you _are_ breathing, and so you have no problem with this uneasiness.  

You sit up straight, brushing imaginary (or not so imaginary) bugs off your clothing and picking at your hair with the certainty that it must be crowned off with a beautiful array of twigs and leaves.  Your eyes have departed the sight of the luminescent sky, though there is no room for mourning as you are now able to fully absorb a different shade of luminescence.

The fields are GOLDEN, for a lack of a better word.  You hadn't quite listened to your DAD and so you are unaware of what these plants towering towards the blue heavens are truly supposed to be.  Wheat?  Sunflowers?  Oversized mustard plants?  You do not know; you know that you are hidden away in a mass of gold.  Something tells you there had been a path through all of this.  Something also tells you that you had thought of it as a highly comical idea as to hide away from said path.

It feels a bit DESTINED that the source of rustling should step right into your line of vision.  As if your meeting had been utterly EFFORTLESS; you had simply looked down from the skies and he had been there. 

Though if you are being honest with yourself you can’t truly use the words ‘stepped into your line of vision’.  You would not be as rude as to say he had crawled into your hiding place, but there had indeed been a lot of stumbling and struggling involved. 

It takes you a bit by surprise nonetheless.  You wonder if the boy is made out of the same material these plants are made of.  His hair and overall appearance is shining with the same golden quality, not but the mere quality but also the very same color.  It is a bit perplexing and you can’t help but to pose the hypothesis that perhaps, just perhaps, it is the sun that is distorting the color and fabric of your world and not your imagination.

Still, you feel as if this particular child has stepped right out of your imagination.  Well _stepped_ , more like crawled.  No, you can no longer avoid using that word. 

That is when he all but collapses, practically at your feet, clutching at the ground as if he had gone for too long of a distance for too long of a time.  You might be frozen, and so you decide to read his face as to tell the extent of his pain and tiredness.

His eyes are shut, but this is also when you REMEMBER that his eyes had been shut even while stumbling into the scene. 

You are terrified as you feel cut off from all exterior help, only surrounded by tall falsely gold colored plants and a suddenly horrifyingly blue sky.

That is when you decide to SPEAK UP, even though you have never done such a thing in presence of a stranger.  Actually, the same could go with any human being.  You don’t speak up much is the point to be made here, but in this scenario, you inadvertently do.  Though you do PRETEND a decision had been involved. 

“Are you okay?”

It’s surprisingly breathless for such a person as you, and it’s also short, not so surprisingly considering the quiet and lonesome identity you have unconsciously picked up in your short few years in this world.  It is just enough though and you are taken with the energy, the certitude that you can take no wrong step in this meeting.

He is on his feet in a moment, not even a moment.  You blink through the daze of light and there he is towering over you, though he obviously still does not outgrow the vegetal company.  No proof or clues remain as to tell you that he had been the same boy who had been crumbled on the floor, rather, he suddenly seems very in control, small childish hands fitting loosely into his jeans’ pockets, an aloof air to him, and a posture that screamed to let him lean onto something, anything.

His reply is seemingly shorter than yours.

“’Sup,” is all that he announces to you.

You can apply the word seemingly for you cannot tell for sure if it were but the prelude to some long, spirited and fluid speech.  You can’t tell because with the announced word he does open his eyes.

They are like ambers, as if they had captured all the light of this bizarre day into his being, they of course only flash momentarily as his head disappears from your view.

He is on the floor again and you are extremely confused.  You are quick to note the despair in his movement.  This is not quite ordinary as his comportment could have easily passed off as exhaustion or an effect of the overbearing heat, you can tell it isn't.  And you aren't so sure why you are so quick to pick up on it.

“Hey, do you need help?”

You are on your feet in no time, tiptoeing around him slightly as the enormous task that is of helping him presents itself to you. 

“Nope, I’m just peachy, thanks.”

Your teeth peek slightly out of your upper lip as you did not resist the urge to grin for his face was very well hidden away in the ground.  The sight is a bit reminiscent of an ostrich to you even though someone has already revealed to you that ostriches do not in fact bury their head into the ground.  It’s safe to say your smile is a bit on the shy side, somehow it conforms to the rest of you.

Still, you are very much amused by his biting sarcasm, especially while being put in such a situation.

“I can help you out,” you propose eagerly.

You do recall that there is a reason why it would be difficult for him to find his way out without your connoisseur-like help.  For the moment, that detail is not so relevant.

“I don’t need out.”

And somehow the two of you manage to rearrange yourself into a position where you are both kneeling, facing each other, unbearably close under the scrutiny of the summer heat.  It’s a bit hazy, you do remember having to pry it out of him…  Yet the sole words you can recall are of his confession.

While he speaks to you, you can barely make out his eyes, only slightly peeking from their hiding place behind his eyelids.  They remind you of how your teeth poke out when you smile and so you assume that he is very much like you.  He must be very shy is what you are implying of course.

“I dropped my shades,” he tells you eventually.

And it takes a bit more clarification for you to understand that he is referring to DARK TINTED GLASSES.   

“Yeah, there _is_ a lot of light!” You let out sympathetically, but in the end it proves to be the wrong choice of words.

“No,” and the word leaves no place for deliberation, it is the sort of no you would hear out of an adult’s mouth and so you are certainly shaken to hear it from him.  Surely the single word would have been the anchor place for many nasty retorts, but he obviously held back.

You are almost afraid to ask, but you do anyway.

“Then what?”

“They’re just really important!”

You take it then that this confession must have been quite sincere if he had so willingly turned to such a snappy mood.

You propose to help scavenge for them and he stubbornly resists you.  It isn’t until you TAKE HIS HAND that he follows.  You've only ever held your father’s hand, it feels distinctively SPECIAL to hold a hand that is close to your size.  As you lead him through the field’s pathways you conclude that he too may be made out of the sheer light that had been composing that day.

You’re not REALLY six years old.

Though you are INDEED John Egbert.

You cannot remember any other moments of the day.  Oh, of course you can.  You do remember the scent of your father’s car when you had climbed back into it, dreading the long travel ahead, it had smelled the scent all cars possessed when they lounged about such arid summer heat.  You do remember sinking your teeth into an apple in the backseat of said car.  You remember drowsily awakening in the car under a sudden lack of light.  You just can’t remember any more of the boy.

It truly feels as if you have missed your chance to experience TRUE LOVE. 

Even though you aren't even so sure anymore if the boy had indeed existed or if he had instead been a figment of your imagination, as you had instinctively believed him to be.  You say this only because you have recently come about the courage to clarify some details of said meeting.

You have mentioned recollections of pathways in golden fields to your father.  He insures you that those were not golden and had in fact been a corn maze.  And then you stupidly realize it is that farm he goes to year after year, to purchase the perfect pumpkin specimen for some relative of yours.  You can’t say for sure how that person is related to you, apparently your family genealogy is complicated, and you have the feeling you had had the front seat to understand its complicated workings, but it has all escaped you by now.

It definitely takes more than a day to get to that place, and you had always wondered why your father dubbed it important to make the trip yearly.  You are starting to understand as you consider the place to be, well, the most important place in your life.

Yet, he assures you that the fields had been of green hues and nothing of golden.  It is a bit vertiginous to think back to the golden boy then as you are unsure if you can even keep on believing he had been golden at all.

You do know however that you often DREAM of said boy and of chasing after him and not letting that opportunity for true love flail away from of you as it had.  You don’t like to psychoanalyze yourself, you happen to have a FRIEND who already enjoys doing so in her free time.

But you can say in all honesty that when you look up to the sky, as you often do, there is no one stumbling right into your life.  Never has the world been as radiant as it had been then.

You've come to the conclusion that you are LONELY, no matter the number of precious friendships you have made over the internet.  There is something still MISSING, though you feel by now you have accomplished the mission bestowed upon you, though you seem to have forgotten it.

There is something missing, you won’t give much thought to it, but you somehow just know the snappy kid had been it.

 

 

 

Your name is DAVE STRIDER.  You are SIX YEARS OLD.

//

And you are royally fucked. 

You should have listened to your BRO.  You should definitely always listen to your older brother.  That’s really all there is to say on the matter, but you will divulge more of it nonetheless.

You are the EPITOME OF COOLNESS, or so that is how you were raised.  You were raised with the firm idea that you possess a cool image and that in no case, absolutely no case, should you let any aspect of it slip.  You, of course, know that it is but a cover-up.  Your brother somehow disregards that and so maybe, just maybe, you have begun to believe him.

You have begun to forget of the other defining things of your being.  You are simply _cool_.

That idea was wiped clear a few steps ago, a long time ago. 

The largest corn maze in the world is pretty fucking ironic and so your brother has made it one of your road stops.  And you strolled right into it, hands in your pockets and firmly believing that you are un-fucking-believably cool. 

Your brother has told you, he has absolutely ALWAYS told you to keep your shades on.  At all times.  You were not foolish enough to disregard it, for you had initially known of the very good reason to partake in such an attitude.  However, you had been foolish enough to start believing in the poorly formed excuses as to why you should keep them on.

‘You want to keep an air of mystery.’

And so yeah, yeah the shades were supposed to be a prop to how fucking cool you were, they no longer were some handicap handed to you by the gods that hated you so. 

When the wind had knocked your shades off the bridge of your nose, you hadn't bothered to pick them back up.  The wind had seemed playful to you, as if its intentions were completely pure.  And never had you been so compelled as to assign a character to something…  Other than human.

You were not a child raised on fairytales.  The closest things you had seen to fairytale books were some insanely mainstream manga stashed here and there in your brother’s van.  Your brother assured you all influences in your life were terribly cool and you had no other choice than to believe him.

But in that instant, believing that the wind had acted as your friend, yet as your leader, that felt completely right to you.

You came to regret this and to have great crisis in the future when wanting to differ from your brother’s opinions.

You do NOT wear shades to be cool.  There is a GOOD reason you wear shades.

And this is something you easily remember when your eyes begin to water at the sight of the illuminated labyrinth.  Never letting your cool persona slip might have been a mistake, for the pain that surges through you is just a bit more TERRIBLE than what it should have been.  Essentially, constantly wearing those ironically shaped shades had been a decent idea, but only as long as it remained entirely _constantly_.

You should be berating yourself, you should retrace your steps.  You, of course, do eventually try to retrace those steps, but you have waited too long.  Right now you would rather be BLINDED and so you keep your eyes closed and hope for the best.

You end up off path, quite predictably so.

What isn't so predictable is the voice that rises up as soon as you manage to thoroughly tangle yourself into these insanely too colorful crops. It shouldn't be so surprising.  Honestly, you should be more surprised that you had yet to cross a soul so far.  Perhaps you have and they had simply stared at you as you blindly struggled past them. You prefer to blame it on all this sun and on all this light.  Who in their right mind would subject themselves to such conditions?

By the time you do hear this voice you have resorted to CRAWLING.  The closer you are to the ground the farther you are from all of that light.  That’s not quite true though.  You really are just falling apart, suddenly wishing for help. You are also suddenly forgetting all of this nonsense relating to your ‘cool’ side, remembering just how weak you are deep down.  It’s not so deep down, it actually stands there, on top of your skin, of your entire appearance, waiting for someone to notice, but no one ever does.  Still it gets categorized as ‘cool’.

In this case you just know you can’t look cool.  You are basically ON YOUR KNEES.

You have no idea what this person has said, yet-

It feels as if the wind carried the words to you.  You have no idea where they came from, you are assuming from up above.  They are vibrating with a type of energy you have never recognized before.  You feel relatively SAFE.

And it is that feeling of safety that urges you to jump right back into the skin your brother had so willingly handed to you.  You are on your feet now, completely cool.  And you let out a single syllable, truly achieving new heights of cool.

You become scared though.  Are you even facing whoever this is?

You open your eyes, because, even if it weren't for the disorientation, you could only look so cool with your eyes closed.

Flash your weird eyes.  Make some clever joke.  Keep stealing his breath away. 

Instead, your eyes fly upward first, an ironically small shred of hope whispering to you that it might be the wind speaking to you.  But it’s only crystal luminescent blue up there, no wind to push clouds into full travel.  And it HURTS. 

Before shooting right back to the ground, your eyes do get a glimpse of him.  And he is like a piece of the sky woven into the scenery.  As if someone had decided ‘Hey let’s wrap this boy up in cloth made of sky.’

Oh and maybe replace his eyes with gems sculpted out of the sky too.  You don’t have time to notice anything else.  You can only register the way he was sitting down, balled up, arms crossed over his knees, hiding away in tall corn plants.  You feel as if he is a person soaked with MAGIC.

You cannot be certain for you are hiding your face away into the ground, your hands clutching at this same ground as if you could pull it back and reveal a night sky instead.

The rest doesn't really matter.  You don’t remember.  You remember his breathy windy voice calling out to you throughout the blinded memory though, as you kept the charade to hide your eyes away.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got your back!”

But you can’t say he had had your back, rather he had had your hand.  And for some unfathomable reason you held on.  You think you might have been positive he had been a SPIRIT.  A reincarnation of wind.  A ghost who had died out there and helped troubled children like you.  He isn't HUMAN, you can’t bring yourself to think so.

He hadn't really led you to your shades though; he had led you OUT.

The rest is forgotten too.  The memory only holds back together at the moment your older sibling slips his own pair of shades onto your nose.  He wears shades just like yours because he too is COOL.  You know that’s a lie.  He wears shades just like yours because he is trying to keep you from being LONELY.

As soon as your eyes are shielded away everything slips back into focus and you are so angry at the tear stains that were surely decorating your face.  Your brother slips in a few words.

“Ready to hit the road bro?”

His voice doesn't lead on to any trouble.  He isn’t scolding you for having lost your shades.  He isn't scolding you.  He isn't even acknowledging the mishap.  But from behind the darkening barrier you can see his own eyes and their worried shine.  You also recall the windy voice having exchanges with your brother’s.

But that is FORGOTTEN.

Mostly because you are NOT six years old.

You are much older and cherish the memories left of the day.  The world had been so COLORFUL and ALIVE.  And you can’t help but to wonder when you cross other people if their eyes are as bright as the hidden boy’s had been on that day. 

You tell yourself it can’t be because you have convinced yourself that the boy had indeed been a paranormal happening.  He had given you the chance to glimpse at the real world though, even if only for a little bit.

So it has come to your attention that your brother had indeed started out your childhood as if he did not have to handle such a problem child, understandable as he had been so young when he had been burdened with you.  And so mostly the two of you hopped into his van and went on all the trips he had always wanted to take.  Maturity and responsibly had eventually caught up with him and, having to deal with the problems of you being the problem child that you are, you are now very well settled down.

You don’t ask for much, or for anything really. 

But he drives you up to that stupid farm every summer.  At your special request and he doesn't question it.  Though you can tell he WANTS TO.  You are both too prideful to speak of the subject.  And so you do indeed spend an entire day in an overheated car to get there.

And you dig out your camera, the one you had modified yourself, and you snapped away for a few hours.

And that was that. 

Sometimes at night you would prop up the shades onto your forehead and you would use a flashlight to see some of these pictures.  And you are continuously DISAPPOINTED as the pictures indicate green as far as the eye can see, but all you can remember is GOLD and beings made out of SKY.


	2. Chapter 2

**X**

 

Your name is JOHN EGBERT you are TEN YEARS OLD and gosh you find the INTERNET to be oh just so wonderful!

Other kids don't take too well to you. // Understatement

It’s not that you don’t like the other children at school, you like them as much as you possibly can. You just don’t get the feeling that they like you. Even though it’s safe to presume that this is somehow your fault. You like people, yeah of course, but what you like most is watching them. See how they interact with each other, capture the small moments that really shouldn't matter, confirm the bonds that exist around you without forming your own.

You are always under the impression that those things will COLLAPSE at some point or another and you have decided to indulge in observing them while you still can. Furthermore, there might be a slight disconnect between you and just about everyone else. You can’t find it in yourself to make a real connection. You talk, you laugh, you joke, you are yourself… You feel completely detached.

That’s alright though!

You are so content with watching over everyone instead. You would be content with that, but it does cast a feeling of uneasiness around you. You are referred to as slightly CREEPY, maybe SOCIALLY RETARDED and absolutely BIZARRE. Kids can say hurtful things, but they haven’t really fazed you so far. You don’t want to agree or disagree with them, you rather ignore your own opinion, but it does hurt that others are not open to you doing what you are most comfortable with.

You want to be around others as much as possible, so you can smile fondly at their actions, but no one is letting you. You've come to realize you can do this on the internet instead.

There are so many people online and no one to reprimand you for your lurking ways. There isn't a problem in the world. And very quickly you can tell who is who on the scene of internet popularity and they are all so captivating and mature and older than you- And you can’t help but to adopt them as role models.

All but one. Though they all have shining CHARISMA, understandably so as they seem to possess legions of online fans. This one person seems to be INSANELY COOL and draws incredibly crappy comics, though they are apparently hysterical.

You don’t really get them, but you offer a goodhearted chuckle anyway. You had your father read a few once while babbling on this precise user’s greatness and he had frowned a bit telling you they were a bit crude for a ten year old. Maybe they were, you can’t be sure.

But he seems to have oceans of friends and connections, where you have absolutely zero. Something calls out to you to befriend him, that’s nonsense of course. Or so you had thought up until very recently.

There isn’t much you know about him or about the thing that pulls you to him more than any other ‘internet celebrity’. You like to think it is because you are of the same age and so he seems to be the only legitimate choice for a friendship. At the same time it might be the air of disregard he gives off, how he can simply shrug off all the compliments flooding his way.

Maybe it’s the rare posts that have nothing to do with his crappy comic. Maybe it’s his never declared but subtle present confession that he loves photographing. And maybe it’s those rare photographs you will see on his website, terribly artsy compared to his usual humor.

Mostly it’s the photograph you saw not even three hours ago. And as usual it had not been accompanied by a caption, but you were almost thankful. You were thankful because to you it had been a great bright sign and you wouldn't want for any words to threaten it.

Clearly the image had been tampered with and so you weren't exactly hoping it to be the location you so often dreamed of. The location exists but in a lapse of your memory anyway, not REACHABLE as you are now. But the fields in the picture were definitely GOLDEN and it tickles the back of your spine with unspoken insinuations.

Then somehow you had found yourself on a chat board dominated by his fans, wooed by the concept that you could withhold your anonymity. And you were angrily typing away to how magnificent said picture had been and how blessed you felt to have seen it. And it’s all a bit getting out of hand and you feel as once again you are sort of creeping others out.

Until someone manages to type in between your excessive praising and it’s all vibrantly green and under a confident name and everything you can’t be.

you should tell dave!! :)

You can tell right away that it is his name. And before you can help what is happening you are switched into a private board with her, which you did not even know existed, and she is dropping his chumhandle as if it should be common knowledge. Not forgetting of course to share hers in the same instant and to present herself over enthusiastically.

It takes you a while to understand PESTERCHUM and to activate your own account, but it was manageable.

And now here you are, still in front of your computer screen, a window opened in this chat system, with this turntechGod presumably online and listening.

You become short of words somehow. You expect yourself to be chatty. Then again, how would you know? But as it turns out you are delving into the waters of extremely awkward.

 

GT: so about that photograph you took…

 

And then your hands are writhing on top of the keyboard and it’s all so bizarre. Your fingers moved so easily above the piano’s keys but in this context they seem to be awfully useless. You are about to break into a sweat when your companion decides to take up the ridiculous task of filling the chat window.

 

TG: who said i took it   
TG: who even said its a photograph   
TG: are you telling me i dont have the necessary artistic abilities to create this picture   
TG: well what are you saying?

 

You LAUGH and it’s just so EASY.

 

GT: but i know that place!!

 

You forget why this was supposed to be confidential information, it pours out regardless. He should understand. That place is really more of a state of mind than that stupid maze. Maybe this person has lost the love of their life too. Maybe they could understand what it felt like to hide away in fields.

 

TG: sure you did kid   
TG: what if i told you this isnt anything like what it looks?

 

He is incredibly funny to you and you automatically understand the extent of his popularity. He had gone out of his way to call you ‘kid’ though you were willing to put your hand in a fire to back up the certitude that almost all users he must meet were much older than him.

 

GT: yeah, you did change the colors!   
TG: are you calling my work predictable now

 

It’s hard to tell through a wall of typed words but this Dave fellow might just be a tad defensive and maybe even a tad more sensitive. It’s hard to tell though and you smile widely knowing full well what this means. This means there is still so much time for you to observe this particular person because there is so much to discover. You don’t think your admiration for him will blow over though. As a matter of fact you are thinking if you don’t come out right away with it he will still feel attacked and never imagine the levels of praise you hold for him.

 

GT: no gosh, i think you are wonderful dave.

 

His words blink into being angrily without missing a beat, easily sidestepping the offered compliment. The cool way he seemed to shrug off praise now appears to you under its true nature. He was the kid who couldn't take a compliment.

 

TG: who is this dave guy?   
TG: he sounds pretty cool if you ask me   
GT: pft, it is you!   
TG: its me im the dave    
TG: no i dont think so   
GT: wow really smooth.   
TG: ok no who gave you my name   
GT: ;)   
TG: it was jade wasnt it?

 

You have no idea what sort of clique you've just stumbled onto, but the feeling of happiness is begging to burst through your ribcage. It’s nothing like interacting with the kids at school and you briefly wonder if this is how it would be with you if you could communicate with anyone through the internet. You prefer to think it’s this Dave kid who is hiding layers and layers of complexity.

You don’t ponder on it so much but you are conscious that you would be happy to observe him for most of your life and you have barely begun typing.

It isn't until your father pries you softly away from your monitor that you take note that the entire day has slipped away.

 

GT: see you soon!!

 

You almost miss the response, but as you shut down the system the red words implant themselves into parts of your mind you had pushed as far away as possible.

 

TG: see you soon john

 

 

Your name is DAVE STRIDER you are TEN YEARS OLD. And you can’t help but to wonder if your life is just a BIG JOKE.

It’s not like anyone would laugh at it if it were. // Not even you.

There really isn't any other reason you would be residing in Houston, Texas. Alright so maybe you do believe that it is where he was brought up himself. And maybe you can accept that his voice is definitely tinged with an overly heavy southern drawl, but… Even from behind your shades and locked up away in the too high apartment the sky looks to you as if it’s set on fire.

It’s not a pleasant golden glow, it literally looks like it’s ablaze.

Your brother must just be asking for it, as if he is going to desperate lengths just to see you stay inside all day. At first you thought it was personal revenge, you were the burden he had never asked for, and in time you leaned more towards the joke theory. Perhaps you are a bit more comfortable with the thought of being ridiculed than the one of being hated.

It’s not like he doesn't want you to befriend anyone, he just genuinely seems to want to keep you inside. You aren't so sure how you feel about that. You get the feeling that you wouldn't be successful at befriending others anywhere else than behind your computer screen.

You suppose you have that to thank him for. Your ‘internet popularity’, though at the same time it feels as if he had purposefully, jokingly, landed you into your initial predicament of loneliness.

At school you are known as the COOL KID. Well you've got to hand it to your bro, fucking success, huh? They see you lean around with your anime shades firmly in place, and presumably bleached white hair sticking out in the most perfect angles. You don’t say much, you never have. People come to FEAR your insane popularity.

And the teachers have just about handfuls of reproaches to this cool appearance that they hand over to your guardian. And he, still treating it as a joke, boasts about your uncontainable coolness. And forgets to mention that your appearance is nothing you can CHANGE. He forgets to mention you have a PROBLEM. But you guess you’re supposed to have forgotten as well, so you let it go.

People at school ASSUME you have something going on the side of school, there is no other way with how reserved and aloof you come off to be. You must roam the streets with gangs at night or something. What with all the school you miss, you must be incredibly busy elsewhere! Actually any time away from school means you are at home.

In your bedroom all day long.

Oh yeah, sometimes your brother will summon you to the roof to STRIFE, in what you presume to be a humorous intent. Actually, you do know it’s his way to get you outside. You’d love to say it is ironic, that he sets everything up perfectly to get you to run away from everyone else, and still managed to act like a worried parent.

You’re not sure what to believe. After all whenever your shades end up askew throughout the fight he will jump to your side, quick to assess your situation.

You are lonely and even a bit SAD.

At some point in your life your older brother stopped moving around crazily. You settled down and you hoped for the best, you hoped to be just as average or as heroic as any other boy your age. No such luck. Life at the apartment felt like a whole big masquerade, a mockery of what life is actually supposed to be about. You are a joke as well. Dirk doesn't even need to treat you like one for you to realize it.

And then he had set you up on the computer, making all of the right connections happen and he had simply told you.

“Do whatever the fuck you like and everyone will love you.”

And you did. Why not? Everyone imagined you as infinitely cool with an infinite resource of friends, so why not be that person?

So you now have more reasons to sit inside, hidden away from the flaming sky.

You aren't nearly ironic or cool enough for your brother’s likings, but you like to keep that a secret. You have formed one or two friendships, real friendships, over the internet. However they are not with the equally INSANELY COOL users your brother had tipped you off to, they were two girls of your age who absolutely did not care about your supposed popularity.

And they made you happy. And you didn't treat them like a joke. You were NEVER going to treat the people in your life like a joke, you know how HURTFUL that could end up to be.

That’s it really. You are ten and you don’t think life is supposed to already be this hard.

You still get your brother to drive up to that stupid place. He doesn't question it, but he is JUDGING you and you can tell. Regardless. You drop the word and you’re off, regardless of school and such. And you drag along the camera you have affectionately named with an overly girly name.

Once every summer at the least. You spend the whole day lounging, snapping pointless pictures as your eyes remain hidden behind the usual barrier. And sometimes you will see a MAN while visiting the farm. One that seems to be the embodiment of FATHERLY, nothing like your own mentor. He is your definition of ECTOMORPH, all crooked angles and comical body language. He feels like FAMILY. And you offer him smiles whenever you see him, you usually end up smacked in the back of your head by your bro when he walks away. Cool kids don’t smile so disgracefully.

But you get the feeling you know this man.

That place is your ointment, the small bottle of elixir you stash away to keep all to yourself. It means a lot more to you than those crappy comics you had taken up as the excuse to be popular online. So you have NO IDEA why you decided to post one of those prized pictures online.

You modified it in some pompous program your brother had illegally downloaded for you, pushing your shades a bit downwards and squinting your eyes in an enormous effort.

You tried to recreate that same FEELING that bubbled up inside of you when your eyes had drowned with light and life. It might also mean something to someone else out there. And it does. And it is someone completely not ironic, just like your two other friends, of your age and who did not know the first thing about the net. He is PERFECT to you.

You have the distinct feeling that the SPIRIT you met as a child might have somehow gotten word of your cry for help online and had pushed the PERFECT boy your way.

It makes no sense. But it’s not a joke, not to you.

He is PERFECT PERFECT PERFECT. You hang on to his every word. You draw those stupid and quick comics with him on your mind, you do not know what has OVERCOME you. Jade and Rose are nice of course, they are so precious to you. John is DIFFERENT. John UNDERSTANDS, without knowing that you understand as well.

But he doesn't see you, not really. You guess that’s alright, chances are you will never properly see him either.

He goes on and on about things that are just not true. They wouldn't bother you from anyone else, they already come to you from a lot of others and they are according to plan. They sort of bother you in this context.

 

GT: oh man if only i could have as many friends as you do!

 

And you always smile sadly in the screen’s direction, the hours you spend at school completely alone hitting you with full force. It’s all that much sadder thinking that such a perfect person would be as equally lonely as you are, he certainly DESERVES a lot better. As where you don’t, because you are a JOKE.

 

TG: the only friendship that counts to me is ours bro

 

And predictably he will answer with a variation of hehehe and your heart will sink as you compose a silly and arrogant rap on spot as to feed the illusion that you too are treating relationships in your life like jokes.


	3. Chapter 3

** XIV **

**   
**

You are still JOHN EGBERT, but you are now FOURTEEN YEARS OLD.

Last year you GREW a lot    //

Not that you can recall just how that came to be, but you woke up in your body one day and…  And it was the first time in a long time that you truly woke up in your body.  Everything was so much CLEARER and everything held so much more SENSE.

There were some things you wish you could return.  Yeah, you hadn't asked for any of this renewed vision, but there were things you hadn't understood in the past that you weren't so sure you were even ready to understand now.

You didn't want to see the colorful writings on your bedroom walls.  Especially not while tossing in bed at night and opening your eyes to face the written insults.  Up until this year you had never doubted any aspect of your SANITY. However you have come to embrace the idea.

Anything is better than to accept SELF-HATRED as a possibility.

One day you had cracked, ripping at the posters littering your walls.  But even as follow-up of this destructive pattern the scribbled and colorful words were still mocking you.  Your father had found you in a heap in your room; he had held you and told you how proud he was of you as he had done many times in the past.  But it wasn't anything like the past.

For some unfathomable reason it felt as if it had been YEARS since such a thing had occurred.  You had MISSED your father for a reason x.  And you wanted to hold on to him for longer than you did; you had a particularly hard time not appearing more upset than you actually felt you were entitled to be.  It also dawned to you that your father isn't as exactly as overbearing as you made him out to be to your best friends.  It’s not because you feel as if you have finally reunited from a long voyage.  It’s because he had always gently made his way in your life, making sure you understood that he cared about you.

It’s because he was ENORMOUSLY worried about what was brewing up in the inside of you as you smiled goofily but littered your walls with offensive messages.  You aren't nearly as scared or as worried or as angry as you might have been last year, before you suddenly matured.  You put it aside and you try to breathe as easily as you've always managed to do.  But it bugs you slightly, it bugs you not to know how you feel exactly about yourself.

You do know how the other kids at school feel about you however.  And it’s not looking all too good.

You've come to be very ENTHUSIASTIC, albeit a bit CAUTIOUS as a result of an unknown adventure.  People think you are a bit of a LOSER.  They don’t bother to hide it, and your skin does prickle a bit when kids, mostly girls, make their way from you with muted ‘ew’s.  So your appearance may be a bit dorky, what with the unkempt hair and thick frames and the overbite…  You know you are more than that though!

Your ONLINE FRIENDS know so too.  They are your BEST friends, they have been for a while now.  But with this sudden growth of your spirit you have come to appreciate them even more.  There is no need to exchange too many words: they get you and you get them.  The bond is somewhat unexplainable, if not completely.  Surprisingly it does not puzzle your father at all that your greatest friends have been acquired through the internet.

Actually, he seems to encourage it, he even bought you that new computer last month…  Which was very good as your last one was very old and this new built-in webcam appears to you as a gift from the heavens.  Though when he had mentioned the idea of buying you a new computer, you couldn't help but to like the idea of integrating a computer to your glasses.  You don’t know why that sounded like a good idea.

Your father sees that these friends are important to you, because he can also see that you haven’t acquired any friends from your physical world.  And apparently he treads softly around you, because you just might secretly detest yourself.

But gosh you love that new computer, and you love talking to your friends as if they were near enough for you to reach out to them.  And, strangely enough, they all look and sound exactly as what you would have imagined!

Rose and her snake-like smirk and waggling eyebrows, oh boy she sure was pretty and she sure made you laugh a lot.  Her voice had a very nice rhythm, albeit a bit chilling.  And then Jade with her air of mischief and mystery, she almost felt like family to you and she was so attentive too.  Her words were basically bursting with energy, and you couldn't help but to feel your own excitement rise with her squeals.  And then Dave-

Well you don’t really know about Dave.  What can you say?  It’s not like you haven’t tried, oh you've tried, maybe a bit too much even.  But in the entire month that you bugged the two girls over the webcam, strengthening the bonds of your friendships, Dave has strategically placed excuses to avoid such confrontation.  Well, he did at first, and as you became more persistent he decided to flat out refuse, time and time again. 

You find this unbearably STRANGE and you just can’t seem to explain why you are being so insistent.  If anything you should be the one shying away from offering visual support to your appearance.  It has been made pretty clear that you are DORKY and that Dave is COOL.  But Dave is cool, exactly.  He would never leave you hanging for a question of appearances.

It sort of REALLY SUCKS, because he is sort of the one you want to see the MOST.  That makes you sound terrible.  You might secretly think you’re terrible anyway, so it doesn't matter much.  But you still try to justify yourself.  More like you want to blame it on your idealization of TRUE LOVE.

Wouldn't it just be so ROMANTIC if you could meet up with the boy from when you were six?  Okay, well, that’s already not so ideal to you, as he had been a boy, yet…  Yet you cannot deny that you definitely consider him to be your soul mate.  Wouldn't it be great if you had met up with him without knowing so?  So you like to pretend it’s Dave.

It’s pretty fucking dumb and it’s still pretty fucking terrible, but if anything, confirming that it wasn't him by catching a glance of him is pretty just.  So you really sort of have to get him to agree to this webcam thing that’s been going on.  Also, he just happens to be your best friend and you might happen to absolutely NEED people that like you more present in your life, seeing as you can’t do it yourself.

Well, the good thing is that he agreed to today.  No more excuses, no more refusals.  And you are beyond excited.  He tries to play it cool, but you get the feeling he isn't being so cool about this particular issue at all.

And so you have been sitting at your computer desk, because really it’s not like you can ever be found anywhere else, hours too early for the time you had both agreed to and literally sweating buckets.  The idea of sweating buckets is almost comical to you, but you aren't so sure why anymore.

And so when his chumhandle blinks to life, you can’t help but to rub your sweaty palms on the rough texture of your jeans and to lick your dry lips and consequentially lapping at your oversized teeth as well.  You might be nervous, maybe, a little, a whole lot, completely so…

The seconds flutter by, and for a third time you are flooded by the same feeling of RECOGNITION.  This is exactly how you pictured him, it’s almost eerie.  You forget to remember that you had never really pictured him in the first place.  It’s overwhelming in the same sense that it had been when you had hugged your father.  It must be mutual, because through the crappy webcams and bad lighting and the whole ordeal, you do catch the twitch of his lips, as if he had been about to grin.

“Dave!”

And then he does smile, but you barely catch it this time as well, as his hand shoots for his hair and his head ducks.  But you have no time to analyze his motives of coolness, because there is so much to comment on.

“I bet it’s the first time you wear my present,” you laugh eagerly, something clicking inside of you and alarming you that he is GENUINELY nice.  That he would humor you and wear those stupid shades for your first meeting.

Maybe it was why he was avoiding you?  Maybe he had to retrieve them?  Because for such a cool guy he sure does lose his things a lot.

Your gut twists when his face emerges once more and you can understand the shade of confusion on his face despite the overbearing eye apparel.  He represses the movement, but it doesn't go unnoticed.  His hand had automatically shot up, as if to acknowledge what you were speaking of.  Surely it hadn't been the first time he wore them, as he had forgotten they were on.

Maybe he over wears them.  And for some reason you do remember knowing this information already.  You don’t particularly like this recurring feeling of AMNESIA, but you swallow it down.

And instead unleash quite a considerable sum of guilt.

There was nothing IRONIC about the present you had sent him.  Well there might have been, you don’t really understand irony…  But it hadn't been your main goal.  You just really wanted Dave to fit the part, right?  You wanted him to own a pair of shades he considered to be important.  You wanted to place him into the role of true love.  You are SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH, and you certainly don’t deserve such a kind best friend.

You breathe in deeply, feeling eagerness tingle through your being once again as you ignore the SELF-HATRED.

“Your hair is bleached white?  Okay so, I guess, I guess you can’t be much cooler,” you’re still laughing, because it all feels so familiar and great.

You see the twitching in his hand again.  Had he forgotten the color of his hair too?  It was almost endearing how any observation on his physique you offered seemed to surprise him.  You aren’t so worried anymore, because he looks much more worried than you do.

“Well say something!” You exclaim after a while, chasing the feeling you were bound to get once you recognize his voice.

“John.”

Your smile drops.  Not because he had chosen to speak a single word.  Not because it was your name.  Not because he wasn't wordy at all, unlike the way he madly typed away.  Your smile drops with the feeling.  Your windpipe has suddenly blocked, a very peculiar feeling for someone who breathes as easily as you do.  There is something curiously tragic about his voice, but at the same time…  At the same time it is such a great relief to hear it.

It is such a powerful feeling that you almost forget to note that he isn't golden at all.  You almost forget to see just how pale he actually is.  You almost forget to guess that the eyes hidden away are probably nothing like ambers.

It’s almost enough for you to decide that Dave Strider is definitely not the person you are chasing after.

It’s not quite enough.

 

 

 

You are still DAVE STRIDER, now FOURTEEN YEARS OLD.

Last year was extremely SCARY    //

You don’t know why, and you have found out that you most certainly do not want to find out why.  You've come to be extremely JUMPY.  You get these awful feelings and instincts.  You've taken to not wearing socks, because you are always under the impression that they are slowly filling with your blood.  You often feel disappointed with yourself, it catches you completely out of the blue and you are shaken with the bad decisions you've taken, even though you can’t recall them.

Things aren't exactly pleasant, but you’re hanging in there.  Things at school are still the same old.  At least you have the close friendships you have formed online, they have been an enormous help, without even knowing they have been probably.  Except Rose, you know she knows more about you than you care to admit.  And at home…

Well it’s still the same as well.  You still hide away in your bedroom and your brother still seems to think he knows what’s best for you.  Maybe more now.  Definitely more.  But it now feels odd to you.  You feel alienated from this relationship, which is incredibly off considering that you form half of this relationship.  It’s this link.

It should have always been weird that it had been your brother bringing you up.  It had never been until last year.  Now, now you just can’t seem to take him as an authority figure.  Something is WEIRD.

Those feelings seem to have been put aside today.  You are giving in to your BEST PERFECT FRIEND and accepting to chat via webcam, as all of your friends had already taken to doing.  You are going to arrive fashionably late for it.  But for now you are trying to busy yourself.

You are NOT in your bedroom, and this has already caught your brother’s attention.  You are pacing, not furiously so.  It’s almost not noticeable, and you like to think you’re doing it pretty coolly actually.  But you are still pacing and his eyes are still following you suspiciously.

You really should just talk to him.  Why not?  When is the last time you've talked to anyone?

. . .

“You know that John kid?”

He is just lounging about the couch, his feet kicked up, his hands crossed behind his head and seeming completely disinterested by life, though you could be wrong, those shades are as good for hiding him as they are for you.

“Mr. Perfect?”

You can’t even be angry or irked, it is after all you who has painted an image of perfection when mentioning the boy.  Well, you DO consider him to be perfect. 

“So we’re video chatting in like ten,” you whisper with the poor excuse of a raw voice you possess, incredibly unattractive in its infrequent use.

“Yes bro, the whole world knows already.”

Your lips shift into a thin line.  To be fair you only mentioned it two or three times, though that had been a personal score.  You feel so INCREDIBLY encouraged to express yourself in this household.  It’s almost too much to handle!

“Forget it,” you mutter against your will, shifting from foot to foot as you want to exit the scene but don’t want anywhere near your computer as of yet.  You consider locking yourself up in your bathroom for a few seconds, but it quickly passes as he draws out a sigh.

“Chill, you’re cool.”

_Not insecure_ is probably what he wants to add, as he obviously guessed the motives behind your uneasiness.

“What if he doesn't want an albino freak as his friend?”

You of course had not meant to say such words.  They aren't COOL, they aren't IRONIC, they are the pure TRUTH, and you want to blame it as a result of this recent fear that has been distorting your life.  But really it’s always been an issue.  And the mere fact that you have been instructed to ignore it won’t make it go away.

You don’t see him move from the couch, you can never quite see him move actually.  He just APPEARS.  But he is in front of you and you are slightly thankful to have him close by, have someone close by.  His nails are digging into your shoulders and you are still thankful, because this is about the only sort of physical contact you can handle.

“Lil’ bro, that’s not what you are, you’re cool,” he establishes in the cool voice you had never quite claimed for yourself.

“I’m Dave,” you correct compulsively.

“Cool kid extraordinaire,” he completes for you.

Of course you see where he is coming from.  You've always seen where he was coming from.  He had managed to keep you alert at all times from the very beginning, the message was clear; _Dave the world will be tougher with you than I’m being._   The rest easily followed suit, the offered mask of coolness to keep away the chinks in your armor.  That had been quite enough so far… Until you had hit some indiscernible force field and had been completely hit with some strong fear.

You aren't fooling him though.  Clearly he can spot how your costume had shed off.  Clearly he could tell how frightened you were by his surprise attacks, despite having dealt with them so coolly in the past.

Things are CHANGING.  There is this SPACE between the both of you now, though it’s not yet time for you to discuss it.

“Egbert is my best bro,” you supply as final response, successfully dragging your heels away from the weight of his hands.

All he does is nod.  And once again he’s right.  Yeah, yeah he IS your best friend.  Some genetic screw-up and damaged eyes wouldn't change that.  Hopefully.

Turns out you might have forgotten just who this Egbert fellow might be.  To put it nicely, beyond CLUELESS and at times bordering IDIOTIC.  Definitely a sweetheart, unbearably sweet, but still a bit on the slow side.  But for once you are also beating yourself up for being as equally slow.

And so he shifts from commenting on your shades, shades that were basically sown to your skin and never left your face, to your presumably bleached hair.  Taking you off guard?  It shouldn't.  The kids at school are the same.

_Strider.  Keeps his face hidden and his hair bleached white to defy the dress code._

It was just a bit different with John, right?  They were details that EXCITED him, he looked so eager to get to know you.  Though you must admit it feels as if you had already gotten to know every detail of each other, in some OTHER LIFE perhaps.  You don’t have the heart to confess to the truth.

‘I’m wearing these shades to face the light of this screen.  My hair is white.  My hair is white, it is not bleached.’

You don’t have the heart to say much actually.  You feel quite queasy.  Not that you aren't nervous, of course not, because even if your coolness is falling in the face of your fears, it is definitely not falling in the face of your nerves.  That is just a bit too much.

Whatever it was, he did notice you had gone quite speechless.  Automatically, you revert to your typing ways.  Overusing the ability to type your responses despite the convenience of the integrated microphone.  He laughs a lot at the typed jokes and you feel a bit of pride, as if assured that he did spend his time laughing whenever you typed up jokes, which was always.

And being OBLIVIOUS of course he does eventually comment on your sealed lips.

“Jeez Dave I would have never expected you to be such a shy flower!”

You have dozens of written retorts you could supply.  Countless actually.  But it seems as if that medium would only serve to dim down the intent.  You could comment on how he was the one to go particularly starry eyed whenever you did let out a few words.  You don’t know what it is, but he definitely seems to go a bit SPEECHLESS whenever you open your mouth.

“It’s ironic, isn't it?” You answer instead, giving up on any battle of wits when you still felt terribly vulnerable in front of the camera.  Even though he didn't seem able to pick up on ANY abnormalities.

“I wouldn’t know,” he keeps laughing cheerfully.

You would be alright with just listening to him laugh all day long.

Just that…?  So yes, you might also be dying to know what color his eyes are.  Sure, you could casually slip in a comment on them and trick him into telling you, but you want to know the SHADE.  You wonder if they look like gems cut out of the sky.

You can’t know if they are blue though.  From behind the darkened lenses you can only tell that they are light.

You can only tell how infinitely precious you are to him.  It feels FOREIGN.

You love it.


	4. Chapter 4

** XV **

 

Your name is JOHN EGBERT, you are FIFTEEN YEARS OLD.

//

You hate yourself.

//

//

You hate the actions you’ve taken so far in your life.

//

On the bright side, that’s pretty much the entire extent of things you hate!  There isn't really anyone else for whom you harbor hatred, and you find that to be quite an amazing relief!  You aren't too sure how you would cope with that, surely it would exteriorize itself in different ways than the sole hatred you do hold.  That one turned out to be pretty SUBTLE.  Who could tell?  No one could tell!  You were awesome.  And you’d manage to convince everyone that you do indeed think so.  You’re CHEERFUL, you’re a PRANKSTER, you’re KIND, what’s not to like, right?

Who could tell?

Dave could tell.

Whoops.

You’d always thought he was the one you liked speaking to the most.  To some extent, it’s actually quite the opposite.  You like girls a whole lot better than guys.  This is your current reasoning.  Funny, gender had everything to do with your initial greater need to speak with Dave.  He was the OTHER GUY of your group of friends.

You like girls better.  They chatter a lot more.  Or…  Well, you don’t really know, girls at your school scurry away from you.  But Jade and Rose, they speak incessantly.  In completely opposite ways.  Jade is overly bubbly and will speak of things that are simply NOT interesting, but they interest her and it’s almost endearing to watch her babble on.  Rose will nit-pick at the stupidest of details, and she’ll do it pompously, and that’s almost funny to you.  It’s funny because, for her analytical ways, she sure is just as fooled as everyone else.

Well, maybe she is pretending to be fooled…  You don’t know, but as long as it doesn't show, you’re perfectly fine with everything.

 See the thing about never shutting up…  Well their words were your perfect cover, blanket, hiding place from observant gazes.  They were too busy running their mouths.  Dave was supposed to fit this image of course.  Dave would fill chat windows with stupid banter while you were away from your keyboard.  Dave would make up the stupidest jokes and the stupidest rhymes.  Dave would always be the one to seek you out.  Dave spoke to you without pause even while you were being unresponsive.

 Correction.  Dave typed.  Dave was actually SILENT.  Very quiet, much too quiet, unsettlingly so. 

 This was your secret to keep.  Initially, you had not even thought of it as a secret.  What you like most is talking to both Jade and Rose at the same time.  Then your problems DEFINITELY go unnoticed, and it’s all so much better.  But sometimes you forget about all of that.  You really are just grateful for your friends, more often than not, and don’t really think of them as noise fillers, but as just that: FRIENDS.  And you’d pouted and sighed.

 “We should get together the four of us.  Where is Dave anyway?”

 Error error, mistake mistake.  As it turns out, neither one of them had ever spoken to Dave.  Not because they had not wanted to, but well, because he had refused.  And your feelings sunk deep down.  So to them he was still the cool boy who was quick with his words.  To you, he’s the cool quiet kid who kept to himself.

 And could see right through you.

 It was your fault.  It was probably your fault.  It’s most likely your fault.  He liked to type away.  And instead of hearing the, the, the _special_ voice he possessed, you heard the clatter of his keyboard.  You felt as if he was HIDING.  Not hard to conclude as he also hid away behind the shades you had offered him a few years ago.  Thankfully they suited him very nicely!  But it did represent some sort of wall between you.  He was hiding behind the cloth of typed words.  You had been most selfish to ask him to cease typing whenever you were using the cam.  You’re also one to hide behind words!  Who are you to ask that of him?

 Anyhow, it had backfired, exploded right in your face, a creamed pie to your face; you honestly had it coming.  You hadn't pushed him into being more TALKATIVE, you had pushed him into paying more ATTENTION.

 Too often you caught a glimpse of his raised eyebrows, usually they were concealed in the shadowed portion of his face and the first times they had come into sight you had also felts yours rise at how _white_ they were.   You can’t say you understand the entire extent of his cool gimmick, but you had a hard time imagining him with anything other than white hair, so you wouldn't complain about how in tune he seemed with his physical appearance.  Bleaching his eyebrows, wasn't that just a little too effeminate?  You don’t know how over the year, speaking with him almost at a daily rate, you had never seen any dark roots.  He was quite the BEAUTY QUEEN actually, and you liked teasing him about it.

 You liked Dave a whole lot and you could forgive his unspoken hair obsession.  You however could not overlook the worry that quickly etched itself across his face.  It was very subtle, so subtle it had taken you a few months to grasp. His jaw would lock slightly, his glasses would shift just as slightly with a nervous twitch of the eye, his breathing stopped all together…  Dave Strider saw right through you.  And he wanted to know why you didn't find yourself as absolutely awesome as you presented yourself to be.

This was all hypotheses of course, but you knew it to be true.  You knew it because you had to keep the conversation alive.  Well, he probably didn't need that.  He looked content enough even when you were struggling intensely for words.  But you wanted your hiding place, you had to weave your own web of words as he crossed his arms, listened, and nodded when needed.

 Then came the realization that Jade and Rose sure revealed a lot of things throughout their torrent of words, Freudian slips Rose would call them, they were really just slip ups to you.  And they kept coming when it was just you and Dave.  You tried to bury them under even more words, but he’d keep the same concerned expression as you moved the conversation farther and farther away from those momentary lapses of judgment.

 Little offhanded comments, like ‘Who would like me anyway?’ and then you’d laugh it off.  Laugh it off because life was mostly a joke to Dave and you were able to copy that.

 You thought it was a joke.  But upon seeing his face presented under different lighting…  Honestly?  It took pretty much an iceberg for him to crack a smile.  It wasn't the sort of stoicism associated to assholes, but to those who were horribly aware of the world’s awfulness.  You didn't like to think of Dave like that.

 There are lots of secrets.  Like you haven’t told the other two of your gang that your pesterchum conversations with Dave were actually just video chats.  They still think he is extremely elusive and that you too are treated with his icy refusals.  You didn't want to cause drama mostly, but also, because whenever you two were on, even if it was daily, it felt extremely special.  And you liked being able to tell yourself that you had seen Dave after he had just woken up, or when he was literally falling asleep at his keyboard…  Any moment of the day was good, any new time was a discovery.  You’d sure like to LIVE WITH HIM, that’s what you've discovered, but that you DEFINITELY keep to yourself.

 Here is the problem.

 Dave knows how to ask the RIGHT QUESTIONS.  And so even without your Freudian slips, he knows the ways to get you to offer responses that would essentially highlight the distaste you hold for yourself.  He doesn’t say much, but every word he hands out counts.

 Today is no exception, thought you had initially thought it might be.  Dave is mostly UNREADABLE.  Not in the; my gosh he is too cool for me to even begin to understand, as you had expected it to be, but as in being a completely closed book.  It was all there, completely understandable, but just out of your reach.  Today, he had been clearly upset.

 You pressed the issue and because he was worn out and still clearly upset, he gave up.  Used his voice, not to ask pointy questions, but to make some sort of attempt at a lame joke.

 “Well y’know, it gets mighty hard being a Strider, turning down the ladies right and left,” he says tiredly, his whole body seeming to droop with the effervescent lack of energy.

 You feel happy, a bit, because maybe he isn't THAT unreadable to you.  His words too drooped, but with an emerging southern accent and it became a bit clearer that he had been upset with something concerning his brother as he had probably picked up the accent while spatting.

 You decide to humor him, because you know about secret issues, and you could leave it as it was.

 “Oh I can’t possibly imagine the burden you carry!” You snicker in retaliation, watching quite attentively as his lips moved.

 “Woe is me.”

 His smile is blinding, yet so small, minimal…  If he were to decide to smile like a regular teenager…  You fear for your wellbeing.  It might be TOO MUCH to handle.  You expect him to go into one of his typed rants, but out loud.  It doesn't come, but your eyes linger on his lips, as if this would encourage him to speak up. 

 The question is strategically placed.  Out of the blue, almost pushing the truth right out of you.

 “Why is it that you aren't romantically involved, like, ever?”

 Had it been anyone else you would have replied with something like “Who would possibly want to spend time with someone like me?” and then you would have laughed loudly, as if that had been a silly joke.  But it’s Dave and you are too absorbed with his enunciation to reply immediately, successfully chasing away the straightforward response.

 “I could ask the same of you,” your smile is still warm, but your words seem to rebound with an edge of iciness.

 “See, I am not the hopeless romantic that you are.”

 You sigh with the romantic sense he is speaking of, your smile brightening at how freer he was to speak when he was trying to pry something out of you.  Maybe you should keep up all these secrets, get him to speak with that heavy voice as much as possible.

 “As hopeless romantic I am holding out for true love!” You exclaim energetically, doing some weird fist pump into the air to illustrate your point.

 It’s true ENOUGH.  It’s also true that no girl in real life wants anything to do with you, but you feel as if you can skip out on that particular part.

 “Doesn't feel like you’re trying very hard Egbert,” he cuts you off evenly.

 Your smile falters, only slightly.  Apart from that first time there isn't much of him calling you by your first name, still, whenever he used any variation of your name, you could feel something bordering your memory.  There was SOMETHING you weren't remembering…  And that something was something you were ready to acknowledge.

 If only you could REMEMBER.

 “True love isn't something you try Dave!  It’s just, it just is, okay?”

 You on the other hand never shy away from using his given name.  And he is positively reactionless when it occurs.  You wish you could crack him open.  He’s just fine the way he is.  But then again you are LONELY, your best friend means way too much for you, and sometimes you wish you could be just a bit closer.

 He stays with the same blank expression.  He’s doing it again.  You’re about to say things that are too true and that aren't meant to be shared.

 “Do you ever get this feeling?”

 You stall a bit, this is Dave Strider, are you really going to ask him about the FEELINGS he goes through?  It will be a short-lived conversation if so.

 You’re fidgeting and your eyes are nowhere towards the monitor, maybe you can forget that he can see you if you don’t see him.  That’s the plan.

 “Like you've already actually met your true love?  But it couldn't work out and so that’s that.”

 You’re squeezing your eyes shut; to force tears or images away?  You can’t tell.  You've linked Dave to this topic in your mind too many times to be entirely comfortable with revealing this. The silence gets to be too much, and you face the webcam bravely once more, smiling your goofiest smile.

 But you can see his white eyebrows now, elevated over the golden frames of his sunglasses and you know he is GETTING IT.  At this moment you wish you could replace this conversation with one with Rose or Jade, but not this.  Anything but this.

 “Yeah.”

 You blink owlishly, not understanding immediately that this was his answer to your question.  Not quite understanding that he was waiting for eye contact to answer.  How could you understand?  You never truly know when your eyes meet his.

 “It’s not a joke,” you say weakly.

 He insists on continuing however.

 “Like the person was actually a ghost?  Like your true love already died?”

 He sounds so genuine.  You’re not feeling so genuine yourself, when is the last time you have?  You don’t like how lightly he is dancing around the subject.  To you it is NO JOKE, to you it’s your life.  Was this some sort of ironic reference to the paranormal movies you liked?  It wasn’t funny to you.

 “No it’s nothing like that,” you snap back, feeling as if the snap was recoiling your own cover as to imitate his status of closed book.

 He looks a bit more like an opened book now.

 Because Dave Strider is SMILING.  A sad smile, a DEFEATED smile.  It comes to you then that perhaps he had not been joking at all.

 You feel shitty.

You’re horrible.

And you hate yourself.

 

 

 

 

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, you are FIFTEEN YEARS OLD.

 //

You don’t talk much.

//

 //

You don’t LIKE talking.

//

 There are even these rumors floating around your school that you might be mute.  Well isn’t that just the lovely cherry on your ironic sundae?  _Oh Dave Strider cool kid extraordinaire, swoon swoon swoon, his white mane and debonair strut, not to mention his awful CURSE of muteness!_   Oh but they are pretty close aren’t they?  You are being weighed down by some sort of curse, but in no case is it cool.

 That’s pretty much it.  You don’t like talking.  You are SUPPOSED to be cool, you are supposed to FORGET that you are somewhat freakish…?  Even though you seem to have forgotten a lot of crucial things, that had not been one of them, and so you had reverted to silence.  Who is there to notice?  Your brother will only be thankful that the kid he brought up isn't always getting in his way with endless strings of words.

 You’re not quiet by nature exactly, you actually have A LOT of things to express.  You just- as you are…  You feel the need to keep hushed.  So you do.  Apart with Egbert.  Egbert is cool, unlike you.  He is IT, he should be Dirk’s little brother instead.  Cool and absolutely clueless.  So you are alright (as you will ever be) to reveal a bit of your appearance to him.  He isn't any wiser from it.

 You hold your two other friendships just as dearly but…  They've got that FEMALE INTUITION.  They won’t think; nice _Dave has white hair and white skin and his eyes are nowhere to be seen._   They could surely put that much together, and that’s not something you’re willing to risk.  It’s not so much that you think they would ditch you for it.  It’s just that if you can’t be unaware of it for your brother’s case, you should at least be able to keep everyone else in the dark.

 Anyway, you don’t have much to contribute to the conversation.  You don’t talk a lot and it has nothing to do with the proposed entourage.  Even with Mr. Perfect best friend in the world, you can barely slip a few words in.  You keep coming back for more though.  Every day after school.  Before school.  When you’re skipping school.  In the middle of night.  Always staring at the rendered colorless image of this best friend.  He fills you with a certain JOY.   Often you DAYDREAM of what it would be like to be this average kid and have him as a friend close by who would waste days with you doing absolutely nothing.

 It’s not like that.  You’re a freak.  He is way too far away and not as carefree as he comes off to be.  There is something pressing down on his shoulders.  You are fully aware that he is fighting his own demons and you are doing your absolute best to be of assistance, but it isn't all that easy.  Most of the time you just want to bask in that adoration you hold for him, you don’t want to spend your time cracking your head open as to fix all his problems.  You still manage to do that.

 You get caught up in serious conversations way too often.  He is usually the one to break it off, thinking you are making fun of the whole thing.  And then he will get the _I just got kicked in the nuts_ look once he realizes that had not been the case at all. 

 Right now is different, it’s different because you are the one who initiated this ‘heartfelt’ conversation and so he is much more leaned towards taking you seriously.

 You’re not liking it that much actually.

 “What happened with your bro?”

 This is why.

 Because you haven’t mentioned Dirk at all and John immediately jumped to it.  You wonder if he is conscious that your brother is basically the only sign of life in your life?  He must be, whenever he suggests that you are having problems, it’s undeniably related to him.  You feel so BARE and VULNERABLE facing him.  Could it really be that someone could read you so EASILY?

 You were supposed to be this unbreakable spirit, like your older brother.  But thinking this only deepens the wounds.

 Yes.  Yes it had everything to do with your brother.

 “What?  No man it’s chill,” your voice dies off near the end.

 You are under the impression that you will be speaking more than intended today.  Your voice is already protesting it.

 “Dave,” he is already exasperated with you as well.

 You barely catch on to his following sentence.  Whenever he says your name it feels as if this cold liquid is seeping down your spine.  Of course there isn't, that’s fairly gross.  But there is something WEIRD about your name.  That must be it.  He is the only one who uses it out loud, and so it’s just extremely weird when he pronounces it, and he seems to like to do it a lot.

 “So how is your brother?” He asks innocently.

 And inside you’re seething.  You don’t want to talk about your brother.  You don’t even want to be in this lousy apartment anymore.  You want to discard these shades forever, run down the stairs and face the world as it is.  That isn't happening, not soon, not ever. 

 “I don’t want to talk about my problems, is that okay with you?”

 Wow, rude.  You are being so rude.  You’re not exactly sure if you've ever been this bitchy with John, chances are you haven’t.  You keep EXTREMELY quiet with him.  You liked it when he talked.  You liked everything about him to be quite honest.

 “Geez!  I was just politely inquiring!”

 All polite smiles included, you are still not buying his innocent act.  Clueless as he may be to the things that were horribly disguised, he was quite illuminated when it came to the issues you buried much deeper.

 “Like hell you were.”

 “I was!”

 “Not.”

 “Yeah huh.”

 “Do you ever get the feeling…”

 You were ready to cut the banter sharply, yet you could not complete as you felt like you were stealing his usual line.

 Oh well.  Even from behind your shades it’s easy to tell how his eyes had darkened, clearly INTRIGUED with any revelation you were about to put out there.

 “Forget it,” you mumble, your hand coming up to cover your mouth, quickly absconding the situation.

 “Dave!” He drags the word out and it feels as if the vertebrae in your spine are snapping out of place and tumbling down to the floor.

 There’s no other option.

 “I just feel so disappointed in him all the time!”

 Silence.

 Unexpected, probably, definitely.  You knew what your home situation looked like.  Rose had hinted to abuse just too many times in the past.  That poor Dave, taking beatings at home.  It isn't actually like that.  Things at home are…  The way things at home should be.  So there is zero safety, so there is rarely food, so you strife maybe a bit too much.  Home is home.  That doesn't bother you.

 “Your brother…?” He asks uncertainly.

 And you let a sound of discontent.  Time to go back to your initial opening statement.

 “Don’t you ever feel as if you were the one who raised your father?”

 He looks thoughtful and you already know it’s a no go.  He is trying to see the hidden sense in your words, there isn’t one.

 “Like I was too mature for a kid?”

 “No like.  Once he was a kid.  And you’re the one who brought him up.”

 “No,” he laughs loudly, once again opting to consider your words as ones of a joke. 

 It hurts a little bit.  But you can tell he believes you slightly, it’s all in the way his laugh is slightly choppy, as if he is trying to make place for his doubts on your sanity.

 It’s so frustrating.

 “It’s…  It’s like all of his shortcomings are my fault in the long run,” you mutter, feeling yourself approach your word limit at a dizzying rate.

 “You can’t just blame yourself for everything!”

 And now you sound like a martyr.  But you’re actually being perfectly reasonable.  You remember bringing him up, you just don’t know why.  And you know you had failed.  You know more than anything else that all of his problems are caused by you, in consequence, he was completing the cycle and leaving you without the proper upbringing.

 “Don’t you feel like you once baked cakes for your father and chirped about how proud you are of him?” you almost make it sound as if it’s teasing and that’s a bit of comfort to hide in.  After all you are Dave Strider and you presumably take everything as a big fat joke, just like Dirk Strider does.

 But that’s your fault too.

 He shifts away from the topic of conversation, but you can tell you struck a chord.  For the millionth time you feel yourself overwhelmed with your luck.  How had you found three friends who had gone through all of the same hardships?

 You should know the answer, you can’t find it anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

**XVI //I**

**  
**

Your name is JOHN EGBERT and you have been SIXTEEN for some time now.

You are in LOVE.

//

Oh gosh, it wasn't INTENTIONAL, it wasn't even supposed to be POSSIBLE!  You were supposed to be heartbroken.  You were supposed to wander the world with dreams of true love completely thrashed.  It’s recently been very difficult to remember you were even once upset with that chance meeting as a child.  You’re in love and not much else matters.

Uh.  Almost, but not quite.

See it was mostly a really stupid thing to fall for your best friend.  You do recall at one point trying to force yourself into that actually.  You had told yourself that maybe your life was this super bad and romantic movie in which a chance meeting as a child wasn't purely coincidental and that the person could rope their way back into your life.  And you had attributed the role to Dave.  That’s cool, ‘cause it passed and you could acknowledge how stupid that had been.  So why, oh WHY are these feelings blooming now?

Maybe you shouldn't have given up on that, now that you've realized how bad you have it for him.

It’s hard to explain.  It’s hard to explain, but in your defense…  You had NOT invited him to your house in the hopes of falling of love with him.  Really, apart from the golden boy, you thought there was no place in your life to be attracted to another person of your gender.  So when you had purchased the plane tickets for him, it had nothing to do with some weird twisted plan.  It was because he was your BEST FRIEND and he made you HAPPY and you just wanted him to be happy as well.

 Let’s rewind to when it had happened.

 Your father is the best.  He, at your request, had not only permitted his visit but even went to the lengths of covering the bill.  Being the decent guy that he is, he arranged it so that neither one of you would miss school, to Dave’s displeasure, and had invited him for the week following the New Year.  That was all grand. 

 There had been a snow storm.  And you had been caught up in the traffic.  And your father had assumed the plane would have been running late as well.  Which was not the case.

 You found Dave outside the airport near the main gates, ironically ignoring the bench next to him and sitting in a bored fashion on his absolutely ironic flashy pink suitcase.  He looked cold mostly, even with the sunglasses perched on his nose.  You had taken a few seconds to smile at how the snowflakes landing in his hair would vanish completely in the masses of white.

 Something broke in you then.  The way he sat by himself, looking at nothing in particular, limbs too long for his body it seemed and hair and skin white enough to camouflage him in the snow storm.  By then it hadn't hit you.  You left your old man behind, almost running to his spot and letting out his name as if it were the most important word in the English language.

 “Dave!”

 Though he had seemed uninterested in everything, as if waiting was absolutely cool, you saw the relief flood him.  You didn't miss how ready he had been to hear his name and to find you with his eyes.  He'd been WAITING, possibly WORRYING.

 “Yo,” is all he said, no matter that worry. 

 That’s when you knew.  You knew you were fucked, because you were in love with him.  In love with how calm he seemed, with how white he was, with how composed he was…  With, you don’t know exactly, but with all of it.

 Somehow you were supposed to hug him, but instead he only ended up scooped into your arms.  It was a bit weird for you to consider that you were TALLER and STRONGER than him, it was weird what with his too long limbs to think of him as someone not too imposing.  But you’d lifted him up as if you had been meant to, an arm underneath his knees and the other bringing his frame in as close as possible.

 And your father had snapped a picture, lovely gentleman that he was.

 “Thanks for capturing my brilliant moment of masculinity,” he had pitched in at that moment.

 You were in love with his voice, so much that you missed the look of recognition he threw your father’s way.

 Not your greatest moment.  Falling in love with someone because of how they matched the color of snow.  But isn't that always how it is?  You thought you had found the love of your life because they had emitted such a golden color, and now this?  Not your greatest moment, but this one, right now, is even worse.

 But you can explain yourself!  Kind of…

 It’s been three days and minus the disgusting feeling living inside of you, things have been absolutely PERFECT.  You were not mistaken to think of him as your best friend.  The hours pass like seconds.  Everything you do with him is completely entertaining and fulfilling.  He makes you happy and you have this feeling that you make him happy too.

 Only this feeling and not an assurance, because he is as hidden as ever.  It really shouldn't be so much to ask, to have your best friend be a bit more open with you.  Really, if you didn't know him so well, maybe you wouldn't be able to tell, maybe you’d think he was being absolutely honest with you.  That’s great, but there is that one flagrant clue that just, no matter how hard you work, won’t vanish.  His eye apparel just had to go.  Alright, alright, maybe even then he was honoring you by respecting your present so fully, but…  No, just no.

 It sucked that there was this zone of his face you had just NEVER seen.  What else sucked?  Oh yeah, all of the other details that screamed at you to notice just how far away he was putting himself from you.  It was the way his hand would slightly reach out when your father offered him the phone, to ask if he wanted to call home, but he never grabbed it.  It was that need to hear from his brother, but his refusal of it, as well as his refusal to speak of it.  It was how he seemed to hold his breath when you left for the bathroom.  It was how he seemed to come alive when you turned off the lights and he finally decided to nourish the conversation.  It was how he would sleep in one vertical line in the makeshift bed on the floor next to yours.

 Yes, but mostly, it was the SHADES.

 You’d taken him for a heavy sleeper, because, to be honest, so far that’s what he had been.  You were going to disguise it as some small harmless prank on him.  Take his shades before he wakes up, make fun of his ability to lose his belongings and, and in no way is this the first intent of your prank, finally see the entirety of his face.

 So with your dainty pianist fingers you slipped the frames off his face, basically throwing them over your shoulders, not feeling too sympathetic for the particular object anymore, and smiling at your accomplished mission.

 Granted, you were fairly quick at picking up on what was going on.  You’d sensed it right away, the sharp intake of breath, the rise of his ribcage.  _He’d woken up as soon as you had touched the glasses_.

 Not only did you know this, you knew that he knew that you knew he had woken up.  He was giving you this chance to put them back into place and to just walk away from this situation.  You didn't take it.  You swallowed and tried your best to remember that this was a PRANK and not some intrusion of his PRIVACY.  There should be no privacy anyway, you were best bros!  But the part of you that was very much in love with him was nagging at your psyche, telling you to back off, telling you that you were guilty.

 He didn't shift out of the vertical line.  He didn't open his eyes.  Apart from the irregular breathing, there was nothing different at all.

 “John?”

 His voice however had completely morphed.  It was chilling, it was powerful, it was frightening even.  One of the few times he had uttered your name, but it installed in you the need to cower back in fear. 

 “Morning sleepyhead !” you let out joyfully anyway, deciding that you NEEDED to act like the prankster that you were, because this was all it was, a prank.  Not your way to sneak into the personal spheres of his life.  It was a prank…

 “John where are my shades?”

 This time, you need to run away.  You need to run away, why did you pick such a place to do this?  Between a rock and a hard place.  Your bed is behind you, blocking your way, and in front of you, perpendicular to you, is Dave’s what should be sleeping form.  There is nowhere for you to go other than to stay there on your knees, hands writhing on your lap.

 There was this tone to his voice now, as if the breath had been knocked out of him.  Which, as you could see, was very close to the truth.

 “Uh…” Unexpectedly, your own voice fails you.

 “This isn't really funny.  I’m not moving until they’re back on my face,” he declares simply as if this was all that it would take to change the current suit of events.

 You’re almost flabbergasted.  Out of all possible outcomes, this had not been one of them.  Your eyes are quick to start searching his face, to find a clue to just what was going on.  He was supposed to shove you out of his way and retrieve them.  OPEN HIS EYES.  Not keep hidden away yet again.  Searching his face is when you start understanding.  His face was scrunched up, as if encouraging this to reveal itself under the form of a bad dream.  His eyebrows knitted close to his eyes and cheeks hollowed in anticipation.

 His eyelashes are strikingly WHITE.

 And for the beauty queen that he is, because yes it just so happened that he was still very much a beauty queen in your eyes.  Taking much too long in the bathroom, adopting some formal etiquette to the dining table, and overall just BEAUTIFUL.  For all of that, you doubt he’d go to the lengths of bleaching his eyelashes for the cool look.

 That should have been enough to convince you that this was in fact his natural hair color.  Even if it hadn't been, the sanest route would have been to ask him the question.  But your hand goes out on an impulse.  After all, if he’d kept it from you this far, what assured you an honest response?  It’s stupid nonetheless.

 “Whoa, yeah.  This isn't such a cool prank, I don’t care what you say,” he inhales sharply with the contact and you can tell he wants to back away.

 Then again he’d said he wasn't moving.  You’re not planning on moving either.  You’d wound up straddled over him with the momentum of your idea, his face still exposed but now in full view as it was beneath you.

 It’s not like your goal really was to undress him…!  It’s not even that bad, he is turning out to be quite the shy wallflower.  You’d pushed the fabric of his shirt away from his stomach, to ghost the white line of hair that moved downwards.  Well that settled it.

 “Dave—“ You start vehemently, none too surprised when he does cut you off.

 “Unless, y’know, assaulting friends is like some common tendency around these parts…”

 You’re not too sure where he is going with this, and actually you do successfully tune his words out.  He must have been hoping to make some sort of evasion of the subject at hand.  It’s the wrong move because with every word he offers you, the more your mind works at making sense of it.

 Once you understand, it’s hard to swallow down.  You think, to some extent, it should be a factor to add to his coolness.  It worked with pretty much anything else.  Like, you find salamanders to be pretty cool.  But if someone were to show you an ALBINO SALAMANDER, you feel it would be much cooler.  The thing is, you've never asked an albino salamander how they actually feel about being different.

 And, no matter how uncool it may be, him obtusely shutting his eyes beneath you seems to be enough proof to inform you that he does indeed have feelings involved for this topic.

 Somewhere in the middle of the mess he was making out of words; the first time he had achieved something like that in real time, you speak up, thinking your words were the RIGHT and COMFORTING ones.

 “You know, I don’t care if your eyes are red.”

 It goes dead silent.

He does NOT open his eyes.

  

 

 

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, recently turned SEVENTEEN.

You’re not enjoying yourself; not AT ALL.

//

 Great, well, that’s already pretty fucking ironic considering that the days leading up to this were the happiest of your life.  But this, the planned fourth consecutive best day of your life, is actually the WORST.  Worse than your greatest moments of doubts.  Worse than the days you roam around your apartment, closing your eyes, and imagining a loving father and mother.  Worse than all those empty hours at school.  Worse than second-guessing yourself late at night when you thought of John. 

Worse than that one time when you were thirteen and you woke up with the weight of a second life on your shoulders.  No, really, you had woken up, and it had felt as if in that night’s time you had lived an entirely different life.

This takes the fucking Egbertian cake. You've been wary all day long, scratch that, you've been SNAPPY all day long. 

Which sucks because as you have said, these three days of finally meeting up with your best friend in the entire world were almost TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.  John is incredibly FUN, and CHEERFUL, and just as PERFECT as you assumed him to be.  His home is relaxing, never mind the creepy clowns (sorry harlequins), it was a warm home, one you were happy John had.  And his father wasn't TOO bad –

The man is a great guy.  The problem is, you know him and he knows you.  It’s been unspoken so far, but it’s a clear reality.  He was the FATHERLY MAN you always saw in the pumpkin crops when you went to snap pictures at the corn fields.  Funny, funny because it is so far away from where you are now.  Then again, you do remember only seeing him in the summer, thinking it was the best season for him to retrieve the pumpkins, but understanding now that it was to convene the travel.  Anyway, what kind of fucking pumpkins would be best in summer?

It’s pretty bad, considering the number of times you've smiled to the man.  That’s not cool.  And it just so happens you've never wanted to be perceived as cool until John Egbert had swooped you up into his arms.  So you haven’t said anything and neither has he.  But so far you've often seen him glance from you to John, as if he’s been working something out.  You pray to God he isn't about to reveal you to be some lame child who takes pictures while still wearing his sunglasses and runs around fields with a big dumbass grin.  His dodgy looks have been especially present today.  But that might have something to do with the fact that neither one of you have spoken at all. 

Well John has been trying, and you've been…  Well, not replying.

You’re hoping you can snap out of this as soon as possible, because this HAS been the happiest you have ever been.  You’re not so sure though…  John is already asleep and you've been…  Well, trying really hard to fall asleep as well.  That makes one day of hell.  And you’d had three days of unexplainable happiness.  Three more days to go.

Shit.  You probably messed up this time.

You’d FROZEN UP, there’s really no other way of saying this.  Had anyone EVER acknowledged your albinism?  No.  Not.  One.  Person.  That could have been fucking awesome.  It could have been a defining moment.  It would probably have changed a lot to your life, finally having that one person that could see you as YOU.

Maybe it was John’s fault too, his way of acknowledging it was just a bit too forward.  And what he’d been expecting from you from the first second was for you to reveal your eyes, because let’s face it, that’s what having someone that could see you for you was really all about. 

Then the fear had exploded in your guts.  What has it been?  More than ten years since you’d actually opened your eyes to the daylight.  Yup, no, not going to happen.  There were no windy spirits to save you and guide you home, there would have been a confused John as you would have struggled to keep them open. 

It had all been TOO MUCH and you’d asked for your shades one last time.  Thankfully they returned and he was finally giving you the space you needed.  And then a whole lot more of space.  You’d messed up.  You haven’t said a word since.  You screwed up.  You have no clue how to approach this situation.

You’re not sure if you’re the one who is supposed to be upset or he is…? 

Regardless, you do fall asleep, and by the time you wake up, you still haven’t found any answers.  You can tell as your eyes flutter open to the sight of the ceiling that it is midday.  This is the time in which your world isn't TOO darkened, as sunglasses were useful and not too obscuring at this time of day.  John wakes up early.  And always attempts to wake YOU up early as well.  Though yesterday was a bit…  Of a special occurrence.  Never before had you really woken up to him edging his hand towards your pant line, but whatever.

Had he perhaps decided to start the day without you?  Had he had it with you?  If it were the case, you would fully understand.  Sickly pale, awfully closed off and not talkative in the slightest.  Yup, there were so many reasons for him to maintain this friendship with you.

In one fluid motion you’re sitting up, sleep knocked right out of you.  Shifting your way to his bed, you prop your hands up to his mattress, using it as leverage to peek above it.

Well, shit.  It seems like your best friend has not left you at all.  If anything, he was probably waiting for you, what with how he was lying on his side, facing the side on which you would emerge from your sleep.  Automatically his eyes lock on yours, as if this barrier of shades actually meant nothing at all.

His mouth falls open.  You’re not the only one surprised.  What you want to do is retreat, flop back down on your makeshift bed.  Instead, he opens his mouth and you don’t find the cruelty it would take to turn away from him as he said words he had probably waited all day to say.

“I’m so sorry Dave!”

It’s a good thing you were leaning against the bed, what with the way he had breathed out your name, as if it were the last time he would get the HONOR to.

You think you’re finally done with being quiet.  You think there is actually a lot you want to talk to him about.  You think it’s about time someone talks about it.  Regardless, he is still the one to slip the first word in.

“I didn't want to creep you out or anything!  I just really wanted to see your eyes, I mean, I still do.  But yeah, no, that’s totally your choice!” He says in a jumbled mess, not moving from his position at all, resembling a deer caught in headlights more than ever with his frames discarded on his bedside table.

The possibility of him creeping you out is so…  It is so non-existent that it’s hard for you to keep your poker face in place.  He was the one who was supposed to be disgusted with your sickly constitution.

“John—“

He’s not daft, he knows you don’t use his name a lot.  He takes it as a warning sign once again, he is panicking.  Really, this time it was but a mere sign of sincerity.

“I didn't mean to be rude or anything!  It’s cool, it’s cool, if you have a problem with your eyes, I mean?  Or maybe you just have a problem with me?  Like you don’t want me to see them, but that’s cool!  No, you’re still the coolest!”

You decide not to try to make sense of that, because you just woke up and it would clearly give you a headache.

“I want to see your eyes too,” you confess, staring into said eyes and wondering just what they would look like in color.

You don’t know why out of all the possible options you had thought this one was the best one to pick.  Before you take time to do any damage control, your fingers drag your shades upwards, away from the weakened eyes, sliding them shut as you do so.

 There is still some mental blockage, this thing holding you back that you want to completely destroy.  You can distinctly hear how deep his breathing has gotten and you feel the need to keep talking, keep trying, to do something with all of this.

 “So, my hair isn't actually white in aims to be cool, it just is,” you start off slowly, feeling the dull thud of your heart as the prospect of opening your eyes becomes the only route to take.

 “It still looks cool!  I still like it!”

 You don’t give his words another thought as you continue with the mission.

 “And I don’t actually wear shades in aims to be cool either.  I kind of need to.”

 This time he has nothing to say.

 “But I guess it’s pretty cool, ‘cause it’s a pretty ironic thing to have, I think.  I mean I know photophobia has nothing to do with photography, but still that is pretty ironic diagnosis for someone who takes pictures.  Shut up, my pictures are great.  What I’m saying is that my eyes really can’t handle the light…”

 Now or never.

 You breathe out, encouraged by his continuously even breathing.  That had been A LOT of words, and maybe, just maybe, one day you will be able to communicate in the same ways you use on your keyboard.  You owe John that much.

 It’s still all sorts of painful, but quite PRICELESS as the image of him becomes unshielded, bare to your eyes.  While you had had your eyes shut his lips had drawn up to one of his amazingly bright smiles.  He was still so perfect to you.

 It falters after a single second, and you fight to keep your eyelids up.  His hands are quick to find yours, he’s telling you something, it’s probably important.  You try to focus your eyes on his lips, but shit is this the sunniest part of the day, damn that window of his and how he never shuts the curtains.

 You probably would have never heard the words.

 Because that had been enough time to note that his eyes looked as if they had been shaped out of the skies.  All the connections snapped into place, his father’s presence in your life, your first chat with John, your views on your life so far.  So turns out there haven’t really been any ghost spirits or whatever to guide you back to your bro.  There had only ever been John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah uhm thank you so much to everyone who is reading and offering feedback; it's just like super great. You guys' fandom is really intimidating and so is AO3 so aaaaah thank you u_u


	6. Chapter 6

** XVIII **

Your name is John Egbert, you are eighteen years of age. // THOUGH YOU DON’T FEEL LIKE MUCH OF AN ADULT.

You feel let down by your PROBLEM SOLVING abilities. You just woke up and as every single previous day you roll out of your bed and land heavily into your computer chair. You try to catch a word or two from Dave before your classes, your other friends actually don’t have the luxury of being online at such an hour. You don’t think Dave can be seen anywhere else than in his room though, you've begun to feel you will never see him again for the matter. You also open a window to the list of flights from Houston to where you live, you never close this window. And every day, you stare at it as if the thing could offer you the problem solving abilities you don’t possess.

It’s been… A year and a half? More than a year since your father drove Dave back to the airport. Surprisingly, you had cried for the better part of the week following his departure. And he’s dropped off enough hints for you to assume that he might have cried in the plane home as well. You didn't mean to be CHILDISH or anything, but the distance was suddenly a lot more painful than it had appeared to be in the past. At first you had believed this pain was MUTUAL.

He promised he would work his way back to Washington, and true to his word he dedicated himself to his online shops, raking in as much money as possible. Plans were made. Laughter registered from the microphones. He smiled a WHOLE LOT. And you felt assured that this was the first time in a long time that he felt ACCEPTED. That didn't even seem all that important to you. You loved him so much. You wanted him close by.

That was all you could talk about for a while, having Dave back in your house. Maybe you could have gotten him to take off his shades and you would have led him around when the light came to be too much and he would have needed to shut his eyes. Maybe he could depend on you as much as your happiness depends on him. Gradually, you came to forget your own problems. Jade cooed and giggled a lot as you suddenly found a new voice, relishing in the power of using words as freely as your female companions had done in the past. Rose scribbled away in a notebook, undoubtedly analyzing this turn of character. 

Dave smiled.

He gathered enough money.

He had bought the plane tickets and everything.

…

Same time as last year; yay.

It came as quite the SHOCK when he PESTERED you a few days before the day of departure instead of VIDEO CALLING you as had become standard.

 

TG: yo so dunno if i can make it after all   
TG: slike shit is cool and stuff   
TG: and jegus i know you want to hold me up bridal style   
TG: because that seems to be a weird fetish of yours   
TG: but yeah just not so sure that is about to happen exactly   
TG: or like yeah no i am not going to make it   
TG: but it’s cool right?   
TG: john

 

You had been caught up in between laughing and inquiring, and the feeling was a bit too strange for you to be able to put into words, and so you video called him anyway, and he stayed stowed away in the safety of his chat. Even the words weren't coming easily then. And so you just sort of laughed and lifted your eyebrows, as the feeling called for you to do.

 

TG: egbert I cant come over

 

That had been his final word before your laughter dropped.

“But why not?”

whynotwhynotwhynotwhynot

You asked a lot. Quite frankly you can’t blame him for not replying through the mess your vocal chords were provoking. In the end, the dam you had broken with the momentum of joy that which released all of your words would have been very welcomed.

“I really wanted to see you,” you let out difficultly, throwing away your attitude of disbelief as it proved to be in vain.

 

TG: i know egbert   
TG: but you got to share the strider with the people   
TG: high demand yknow

 

But you didn't know, and you certainly did not know why he had decided to ditch you just like that.

Crying in front of one of your good guy friends (though you only have one really) should be synonym to loss of said friend. At the time it was hard to evade as you truly believed that was it, termination of friendship.

Maybe you had tried to say something, but all you really ended up doing is rubbing at your eyes in front of your webcam as the plans collapsed and so did your newly acquired sense of carefreeness.

 

TG: i wanted to see you too

 

And that was just the thing with Dave. You can’t deny it. Whatever it was, it was always MUTUAL, but you could never tell. And so thinking back on it you did think he could have shied away from the webcam as to not lose his dignity in the moment of offering his confession.

But that’s just the thing. It’s always MUTUAL. You were pretty sure he did appear to be just as upset as you did as he announced the cancellation, thus not wanting to reveal his face. Whatever it was, Dave still wanted to come over.

You’d tried a lot of things, because one year apart had already been… It had already been what it was. So when you spoke of it with your father, he reasoned it may be concerning the financial question of travelling, but even him offering to purchase the tickets yet again did nothing to help. In the end, you never got a straight answer as to why he was suddenly eclipsing from your house.

However, the day he was supposed to arrive, you had finally managed to get his face onto your screen. And with the most tired smirk you had ever seen on him he had supplied a few words, “Shit isn't too good over here right now.”

You didn't know what that meant. You still don’t.

What you DO know is that shit probably hadn't become better. Considering how close you had become after his stay at your house, how HONEST he finally was, you were now taking huge steps backwards. As of recently the only communication between the both of you are throughout pesterlogs. You are fairly certain he is accessing the online world through a handheld device, or you hope so, because his speech is incredibly off.

Something was going on with him, and it apparently had nothing to do with you.

You think the most SADDENING is that you KNOW he wants to come over. You know he would be happy to see you too and you have ways of letting that happen, but somehow… Somehow it isn't. You try your hardest to work your best in your now collegiate classes, to remain a good son, etcetera, etcetera… Worrying over your best friend is a perpetual thing though.

You wonder if it has anything to do with his BROTHER. You do recall your father insisting on Dave calling home. Then again he had acted particularly ODDLY with your friend. Finally it had been the eldest Strider who had given in and called first. The conversation had been short-lived and you had felt TERRIBLE for eavesdropping. Especially considering how evasive Dave had become as you had watched over him and how his voice had fallen into a hush.

“D’you think I could stay longer?”

You had signaled to him then with great gesturing of your arms, jumping up and down with excitement. The thing was that he hadn't asked you to stay longer. The thing was you had thought he was probably looking forward to running away from your home. The thing was you were so happy and surprised that he would stick around longer.

Back then you had thought it was simply to stay with you and not to stay away from home.

You don’t think too much of it today, because he had backed up his line not even a few seconds longer when Dirk had surely questioned his motives.

“It’s just John. It’s just like, this breath of fresh air.”

His face had gone positively RED. He avoided your gaze for the better part of the night, and snapped at you at any instance he thought you might be making a reference to his confession. This was SPECIAL. You had never been a BREATH OF FRESH AIR to anyone before, not that you can tell of.

THIS WAS SPECIAL. He would be back. He wanted to be back. You wanted him back.

He didn't come back.

He had planned to, and it was all lovely… Then he hadn't come back and most of what you had taken for granted had come crashing down.

You didn't get to pester him for entire nights. You got elusive replies, the usual detached raps… No sincere heart –to-hearts. You didn't get to hear his hesitant voice or see his pale face. You didn't know much of his situation. You felt left out.

A feeling that by now should have been scheduled routine. This is the first time you brought yourself to CARE.

He is online this morning, of course, of course where else would he be. He isn't answering yet again.

 

EB: try your best today.  
EB: stay safe, i’ll talk to you later tonight.

 

But not really, you might not talk to him all day to tell the truth. It might spread to more than one day. You don’t know what is going on over there, so you keep trying your best to show some SUPPORT. You miss him.

Dear Lord you miss him.

 

 

Your name is Dave Strider, you are eighteen years of age. // YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO BE AN ADULT.

You’re pretty much fucking locked in for pretty much the rest of your fucking life. You don’t want to stay here. You want to go. You want to leave. Why are you here?

W H Y

Your efforts are in vain. You figured that out, you don’t know how many months ago.

So you started reaching out. You've been TRYING to reach out anyway, as if that hadn't been clear enough beforehand. You can count on John, you always have. He’ll always lead you out. That’s obviously how he had run into your life. He was here to guide you, to help you, to let you LOVE HIM.

The hints have started slipping away from you. He is supposed to get it. He is supposed to get a big picture of the situation. He is supposed to…

You don’t know exactly. Maybe you've always acted like you were some sort of big shot and had to be on constant alert. Which, to be fair, had been absolutely true. But why doesn't he understand this nuance between being TESTED and being LOCKED AWAY?

You want out you want out you want out you want out you want out you want out.

It hadn't always been like this. At first, near Christmas time, you had wanted back to the Egbert residence, back to those two who had seen you for you. Even if John couldn't remember so well, his father knew, his father knew of you as the kid who ran around with a camera within a maze of corn. And John knew you as the albino kid. Well no, he would never describe you so shortly. But he knew and that was a lot. And he fucking acknowledged it.

Let’s put that aside and forge you a cool identity. That hadn't been the response, that should NEVER be the response! Okay no, it was actually super chill, you could deal with it. But you hadn't LIED; John was that breath of fresh air. You needed him nearby. You needed this sort of presence in your life.

Then.

Just.

“No.”

No you aren't leaving the house. No you aren't boarding that plane. No you aren't leaving this state. No I don’t care about the money loss. No you aren't going back to that house.

W h y W h y W h y W h y

You know why. You won’t admit why. You don’t like thinking these familial things through. You’ll just leave it as it is.

It came as QUITE THE SHOCK when you attempted to leave for school only to clonk your forehead against the locked front door. You hadn't tried very hard, because, fuck it was SCHOOL and you never really had a place there. You didn't understand why the door remained locked after that. You took it as an opportunity to practice your infamous NINJA SKILLS and to question the fabrication of doors that lock BOTH WAYS.

It always resulted in finding yourself on the roof and then dodging the hell out of there.

At first he would counter you at the bottom of the building, successfully sending you back upstairs. Then it elevated slightly. The more weeks went by, the fewer stairs you could leap down before his return. And one day the door leading off the roof was locked.

That had been that.

No matter your lock picking skills, you knew locked doors were a promise of something else. It was a locked door, but what it really meant was that if you tried getting to the other side, you would not end up successful.

That’s when you finally felt the PANIC settle. Bottom line was you weren't considered as a cool bro by Dirk, you were considered as some little sickly guy he had to keep a watchful eye over. It was SUFFOCATING. That’s when you started dropping the hints. He would eventually come to question why you were always mentioning being up on your roof.

But not really.

 

EB: don’t forget to wear sunscreen!!

 

Not only did it embarrass you slightly, it fucking made you FURIOUS. Aw, won’t you look at that? He’s probably been surfing the web like crazy, trying to keep up with all of your medical bullshit, deciding that he did in fact understand just how YOU should protect your skin with your fragile complexion. To some extent it was unbearably sweet. To another it still felt incredibly alien to you, being treated as if you really had this… THING you had to deal with.

He never got it though. He didn't seem like he was getting it.

Time to assess yourself. You are playing the role of some sparkly princess locked away atop her tower. You don’t know exactly why you are relying on John to come and save you. He’s not exactly befitting to be a prince, in the same way that you are not befitting of being a princess. You shouldn't get used to that stunt he had pulled when you were kids, he wasn't your red thread out of life’s maze. He wasn't going to lead you back home. No matter that he might just be the LOVE OF YOUR LIFE, for the place you want to escape might just be what your HOME is.

This isn't the place you want to be at. It is however the place you are trapped in, and for that sake you might as well PRETEND. You've learned that you are good at this art of pretending. You pretend you’re a cool kid. Or so you’d pretended until you had found yourself HOMESTUCK. Who were you pretending for now? Only your brother and his rare appearances?

Not quite. You are pretending for YOURSELF, you do realize this, right? Of course you do.

So let’s pretend this place called home is where you want to be and the place you love.

… Why wouldn't you after all? Maybe you want to see how much LIGHT and COLOR there is out there. Maybe you want to be a bit FREER and HAPPIER. But no.

No, let’s pretend this is the place you want to be and the one you love. So the rooftop is the easiest place for this. Easier, because you are so close to the sky. But behind your shades the sky never looks as BLUE as it does RED. Burning the horizon with forces unknown to you.

You've recently EXHAUSTED all exit routes. This is IT. Well. Today is particularly IT. Today, overbearing day of summer, your brother has finally refused to take you to that pumpkin farm with the infamous fields. The look he had given you, even with the shades, was bordering disappointment. Actually his words had bordered the truth for once, but he remains the silent type and you are left with the speculations. He wants to know why you insist on going back to the place where you had made an EMBARRASSMENT of yourself.

You think it’s the one place where you had been YOURSELF.

ACCESS DENIED you guess, but what you really did was fled to the roof, though you deemed to have done it very swiftly and stealthily, it is safe to say that your brother definitely did not miss your escape. You don’t really CARE. You think the only routes you can take pass by the roof. But they have been blocked off, haven’t they? All but one, right? No one could take this one away from you.

So you have been thinking about jumping a lot. No you aren't MISERABLE, well, yes, you always have been you suppose, but you aren’t TIRED OF LIVING. It’s quite the opposite in fact. To you it is the last escape route. Towards life, not towards death. You don’t know… You know that there is more to LIFE than what you can remember, you know there are these layers… You know you get more than one life…?

Well none of that is actually knowledge, you feel it as instinct. This, however, is the knowledge that your way out is stepping off this roof. You’re in your right mind, thank you very much. It wasn't even as TRIGGERING as it had been REVELATORY.

He refuses you this one excursion, you are out of here.

This is why the tips of your toes are nicely lined up with the very edge of the edifice. You've been here for a while now, because you have been feeling PARADOXICAL. All you see down there… Well you don’t see much. But it’s the opposite of the sky. It’s the opposite of everything you love. Do you really want to be heading towards that for what could end up being the last seconds of your life?

You've been thinking of taking your shades off. Because you love colors just as much as you love the skies, and so then it wouldn't all be so bad.

You’re taking off your shades, you’re doing it.

It just doesn't help that the last time they had been off you had been in the company of one JOHN EGBERT, the one person you love more than illuminated colors and skies. Then again the chance of such a thing occurring again is dimming quickly. Take your shades off.

Take your shades off. But no one will be there with you when your weaknesses are showing yet again.

Take your shades off.

You do- you try. You’re still glancing downwards when you do try. And just as your fingers graze the frame, air fails you. You can’t inhale or exhale, for the wind has jumped up quite suddenly, incapacitating you of the delight that is breathing. It’s fleeting, you are windswept nonetheless. Hair considerably ruffled, what should have been burning skin frozen with the happening and overall…

Your hand falls away from your face. The air had rushed upwards as if wanting to knock the hand away for you. But as you keep glaring intensely down below, there doesn't seem to be a viable source for such power. It’s a disastrously warm day in Houston and there is no place for wind, not even for a second.

Your fingers are typing away on the keyboard of your handheld device before you can register the motion. You are still dangerously close to the edge, but for some reason, you have forgotten about that.

 

TG: yo should i jump?

 

It only feels right to contact HIM after the wind. For some reason. You feel what SHOULD be right is contacting Rose, but it doesn't even spring to mind. You don’t type in anything more or anything less. You almost don’t wait for an answer. You almost don’t wait, because that feeling, the one you've had for a few years now, the one of blood pooling at your feet, is back at full force. You would jump to make it go away.

You really would.

That’s when the phone rings. It does not STARTLE you, you aren't DOUBTING the caller’s identity. But your movements are sluggish to pick it up. And even once held against your air, you find yourself to be TONGUE-TIED.

He isn't.

“Hi? Dave?”

The accents are slightly urgent. Scratch out slightly. Up to the point of hearing his voice again, you hadn't realized you had been holding something in. Never mind how he had known right away what you had been implying.

Never mind all of it, the tears are streaming down your face. You don’t think of yourself as an EMOTIONALLY INVOLVED BEING, you are however learning to accept pulling wrong conclusions. This is DECISIVE, no matter how BANAL you were making it out to be.

“Yeah,” you reply sheepishly, a sob working its way into the single syllable you thought you had mastered a long time ago.

“It’s not as bad as it seems, okay?” he continues just as urgently.

You clearly hear shuffling on the other side of the line. He feels the need to move, but you know no action he will take over there will have a repercussion on THIS.

“It’s pretty bad actually,” you chuckle through the imminent pain that has taken over your diaphragm.

And this time you know you’re RIGHT. It’s pretty bad. You've always hidden yourself away. There is no evident place for you in this world. You are PARENTLESS for fuck’s sake. Your brother could do much better than taking care of you, having to LOCK YOU AWAY like some wounded animal. It’s pretty bad that you are in love with John Egbert and relatively unable to reach out to him.

“But it’s fixable! We can fix it together. Maybe it looks like I’m busy, but, fuck Dave I’ll be there all the fucking time if that makes it better.”

He is clearly PANICKING, but the prospect of his words is helping the feelings brewing inside of you to SETTLE DOWN.

“Yeah. Yeah, I could probably deal with that,” you sniff in what you think might be a PATHETIC version of the image your brother had built up for you.

You would be okay with having that small crew of people still caring about you while your life wasted away. You guess that’s how it’s always been. You just needed to REMEMBER, as it seems you might be prone to FORGETTING.

“Now please just step away from there.”

He is laughing anxiously, and you are laughing earnestly, because you had barely said anything and he had coined your situation perfectly.

You step away.

Your name is Dave Strider and maybe you don’t need to result to SUICIDAL TENDENCIES. 

Maybe you've just been a bit tired and need a break…


	7. Chapter 7

** XIX **

 

TG: where doing it man  
TG: where MAKING THIS HAPPEN   
EB: oh gosh, what is it now Dave?!   
TG: today is the day   
EB: uh…?   
TG: game over, strider is leaving the nest   
EB: oh…  
EB: OH! are you sure?   
TG: point of no return is now   
EB: shit no, listen my father isn’t coming back home for a few days, just wait a little bit, we’ll come and get you!  
EB: geez, you’re so reckless.   
TG: precisely how my exit was orchestrated to be   
EB: there aren’t any chances anything bad will happen, right?   
TG: i’ll see you soon hopefully egbert   
EB: wait!!!!!!!!

 

turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering ectoBilogist [EB] at 9:08

 

EB: fuck

  

Your name is JOGN EGBERT you are NINETEEN YEARS OLD and //

 … fuck

fuck

Fuck.

**FUCK**

 

 

 

You are DAVE STRIDER and you are finally NINETEEN.

//maybe the world had decided to wait until this last birthday of yours before setting into motion

 Probably not, you are merely being MELODRAMATIC, to tell the truth your birthday was already half a year ago. You've just deserted the last friend you have had to contact. He was being on the slow side, so you ditched him as quickly as possible. You’d contacted Rose first, and then Jade, with the same opening lines and they had caught on RIGHT AWAY. They had had distinctively different approaches, but in the end they both meant to wish you luck.

 John was dense and… And you really shouldn't be thinking of him right now. You should be FOCUSED.

 You triple check your backpack. More than triple check if you’re being perfectly honest, but you aren't admitting that you had woken up at frequent intervals to rummage around the bag. There was no time to change it now. The contents of this backpack are the things you want to hang on to. It is once again fairly unsettling to be faced with the bareness of your life.

 It’s alright though. You’re leaving this behind. You’re making this happen!

 Your brother knows OF COURSE. He has been sitting upright on the futon for hours already. You had seen him when you had woken up and made your way to the bathroom. He kind of really scared you a little. HE KNOWS. Because after all of this time, you’re still sort of a JOKE to him, a joke he needs to keep somewhat safe, a joke nonetheless.

 It’s as soon as you have stopped in front of his futon and dropped your bag to the floor that you have decided this will be DIFFICULT. All and all he is still the man who had made all the decisions in your life, the one you could trust to guide you. He hadn't done such a horrible job. You are starting to think that the only actual horrible thing in your life is yourself. But regardless…

 You are still leaving this place.

 “Let’s go to the farm.”

 This is the last chance you are granting him, then you are going. You’re going no matter what he says.

 You hear his tongue click on the roof of his mouth, you see his hands cross behind his head, you feel his words before they are even drawled out.

 “I don’t think so.”

 He is smirking right at you, and you can tell he is waiting for you to challenge him. He wants some sort of showdown. The thing is that you really aren't interested. You aren't interested in STRIFING, you aren't interested in upholding your INTERNET POPULARITY, you aren't interested in any of these cool shenanigans. You want to go OUTSIDE, so you tell him.

 “I haven’t been outside in ten months,” you end up saying, your words shattering under the pressure of this supposed cool façade.

 It’s hard to tell from behind your shades, but you are fairly certain your skin has transcended to the shade of your hair, it’s probably frightening. Thinking about it only piles up the constant nausea that has been hitting you. You are sicklier than EVER.

 He had good intentions, surely. Where had it gone wrong? It HAD gone wrong, it’s basically a wonder you are surviving at all, you have become a HERMIT.

 “Your life choices are up to you bro,” he replies nonchalantly, exhaling deeply as if he had just spewed out the wisest piece of advice.

 “There are bars on the windows,” you say dejectedly, still grieving the loss of access to the roof.

 It was a long time coming, one day he had looked at you, simply LOOKED at you. You recall having him do the same exact thing at the age of fourteen as well, when you had developed a certain overwhelming fear. He looked at you and your thoughts of jumping were no longer private. Yes, John is included in privacy matters.

 Then the roof became off-limits. You want to be angry with him, you aren't.

 “Get creative,” he smiles simply.

 And maybe there are some things he doesn't really know about you. Maybe he hasn't quite caught up with your dropping of the cool kid persona. OR MAYBE it’s all a big joke to him.

 “I’m leaving.”

 You have never been THIS honest, yet, yet he laughs at you. That quick cool chuckle, the one that gives off the vibe that he is totally disinterested. And for the umpteenth time you feel bile rise in your throat, because for some reason, you feel like he owes you a lot. You feel like you have sacrificed a whole good deal for him, in some other life perhaps.

 “I’m not coming back,” you continue patiently.

 The smirk is still on his face.

 “I’m going to that farm and you can either bring me or hand me the keys,” you finish with all of the restored calm and coolness.

 You've got this. You've planned it out. You've got everything you need. You know where you’re heading. Absolutely nothing can go wrong.

 “Just what are you accomplishing by going there?”

 The question takes you off guard. You weren't expecting any questions. A strife, perhaps. Screaming, possibly. Refusal, definitely. Freedom; hopefully. He’s just always ASSUMED everything about you, there was no reason for him to question you, he had SHAPED you.

 “There’s just this pull…”

 “Yeah and lots of people end up doing pretty dumb shit by going with instincts.”

 He frowns and you feel he has gone down that path… You feel you were there when he had and there had been next to nothing you could do. NO. Never mind that, whatever that was, it has nothing to do with your current situation. It has nothing to do with YOU being unhappy.

 “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than there.”

 Somehow you are back to your poker face. Somehow the bag at your feet is no longer frightening you. Somehow you feel as if you are very close to meeting up with John again. SOMEHOW YOU HAVE THE STRENGTH TO DO THIS.

 “Playing out in the sun doesn't make you any more normal.”

 Sharp intake of breath.

 Okay, this is new to you too. Yeah, way to drop the bomb calmly. So suddenly you are Dave the ALBINO kid. Well, fuck.

 “It makes me happy,” you insist.

 “It’s best not to get used to happiness.”

 He is speaking a lot more than usual, you should probably listen to his advice. You should probably think over what the impact of losing happiness could have on you. He is still your brother, you still trust him, what is going on? What is going on is that you are nineteen and you want to go into the world.

 What is going on is that you’re leaving.

 “Well I’m certainly not going to get used to playing the part of the caged bird,” you bite back.

 “Like you could fit any other part.”

 This hurts.

 You’re a hero.

 You’re pretty sure you are supposed to be the KNIGHT.

You’re the hero of this story and now is time to get the fuck out.

 The bag is slung over your shoulder, you walk up to him, and you extend your hand out, your final request for the keys. He grabs you by the shoulders instead and forces you down to your knees, because, let’s face it, as sunless as you've gone, you don’t have the strength to put up with this. You ARE strong…. Yet you aren't.

You can guess the outline of his eyes from up close, had the apartment always been this bright? The look is charged, you can see it so well. For a fleeting second you think he is about to open up to on an affectionate level. Maybe he will hug you. Maybe you get the brother that is happy to have to take care of his younger brother. 

You can’t be serious. You’re a BURDEN; you would have been for anyone.

Maybe, just maybe he will convince you to stay. Maybe you aren't as caged as you are loved.

Instead he snatches your sunglasses off your face. Instead you hear the sickening crack as he breaks them sharply. There are a lot more sounds of course. The jingling of the keys as they land into your palm. His crystalline laughter. HIS WORDS.

“Let’s see how far you go now. Fly, Dave, fly.”

He’s mocking you. You are but a joke, the trapped bird cut off from the world.

Most of what you hear is the painful buzzing in your ears. The apartment had seemed brighter beforehand. You get it now, he had turned on every single light, in preparation for this. There are too many feelings for you to begin to analyze them.

But your cheeks are wet.

You don’t know if it’s just the pain from the bright environment. You don’t know if it’s just the relief to be set free. You don’t know if it’s regret for the strange bond you had had with your guardian. You don’t know if-

“Those were from John.”

This is the most strength you've spoken with since… Well, you've never spoken like this, because you've always been this sort of stranger in your own skin. Wow. Your cheeks are getting wetter by the second, but you are suddenly IN CONTROL.

His mouth falls open, but you have no time to examine this. You are stumbling to the front door, running into all possible objects, eyes swimming and heart over flooding with these suddenly too bright images. It takes too long for you to get the door unlocked. He speaks to you through the whole thing, you don’t listen. You can’t hear him. You don’t hear him approaching, and finally, when his hand touches your shoulder again and you are afraid you will find yourself on your knees there is a distinct click and you are RUNNING out the door.

You haven’t gone down these stairs in a long time. Some part of you wants to make a joke about the staircase, an overused and familiar joke, but the majority of you has HAD IT with jokes. You’re done.

You think you might have twisted your ankles flying down those stairs, but you are out and about in no time. Under the sun, eyes generating tears like no tomorrow as you damn how you had forgotten sunscreen. Goodbye ghostly skin.

You've been prone to FORGETTING for a while now anyway.

It is by far the most difficult trip you have ever made. Getting to the airport takes forever. Buying a ticket is hell, burning retinas included. A lot of the employees are having quite the hard time with you, it’s not every day that they get a grown albino MAN crying at their desk.

Big surprise, you've forgotten most of the trip. But now you are home. You are finally HOME. Getting from the airport to this farm wasn't so difficult you suppose, though you don’t recall ANY of it. You just know that it had been night time and it had made it all that much better.

It’s still night time and it’s not just your eyes tearing up now, you are officially crying with the relief previously mentioned.

You’re facing this fucking huge maze of corn in the dead of night and you are home.

 

 

 

Your NAME doesn't really matter, neither does your AGE.

//

The things that are really important to YOU are your responsibilities as a father. You've got the most wonderful child in the world, it’s just too bad he doesn't realize it. You wish you weren't to blame for his impending sadness. He doesn't seem to be aware of it though, so the cause remains thoroughly shadowed.

You’d noticed it at a very young age. You’d WANTED to be the model father, so you signed your kid off to as many different activities as you could, to find what he was best at and help him develop in it, or really anything that he enjoyed the most.

It was obvious from the very first lesson that your son was meant to be a concerto pianist. That had been DELIGHTFUL. He also naturally wanted to compose. And from that very first lesson, the simple melodies he constructed were made of sheer sadness. They were easily the SADDEST tunes you’d ever heard. To this day, it remains true.

Doesn't seem to notice it though, nope. No matter the teacher, you insisted for them to give a lot of upbeat, quick and lighthearted pieces. And he excelled so, but he never seemed to grasp the difference between his assigned pieces and the one he fabricated out of pure air.

You love him so much.

So as soon as you had sensed it, you’d jumped to the first conclusion.

Surely you weren't to blame for the lack of maternal figure in his life. It could still take its toll though… So you remembered your own mother, so soft and caring and remembered the aromas constantly drifting out of her kitchen. When YOU had felt sad or lonely as a child, your mother would bake you a cake.

So you baked a lot of cakes. You didn't like baking particularly, but as soon as you caught sight of his grim aura, you set out to get the ingredients. Over the years he became tired of cake, as did you. It hurt a lot to inflict such a treatment to the precious memories of your mother. Regardless, you kept baking the cakes, hoping his eyes would light up for good one day.

He liked laughing. He liked laughing even though he did not seem inclined to do so naturally. So you invested yourself in his prankster ways, you tried your best to accommodate him with all of the funniest gigs. You were all about BUSINESS, but… Well, whatever!

Your child was sad.

He was very much unaware of it, but to you it was extremely obvious, and painful. You tried your best to install a HOMEY feeling to the house, tried your best to trick him into happiness, tried, tried, tried… He’d laugh a lot, and would smile a lot and- he was generally happy. But as soon as he was left with himself, you feared for the worst. And it was ALWAYS the worst.

He’d run into TROUBLE from time to time; and not from pranks gone wrong. From the pent up need for self-destructive behavior. It struck you as odd to pick him up from school after a minor blowup, or to enter his room to see the walls completely disfigured or to face the fact that your kid was prone to NIGHT TERRORS. You had expected his life to be easy, comfortable in a certain way. It was difficult to a certain point to see him STRUGGLE. Especially when he conveniently stored the memories of struggling somewhere he never tapped into.

You hadn't planned for the INTERNET to be any part of his life. However, you are more than alright with his online friends. THANKFUL, perhaps. Then again, it certainly worried you that your son’s memory seemed this dysfunctional. Circumstances offered such COINCIDENCE, but not one he would ever come to appreciate.

For you, it’s a fairly significant memory. You remember the smallish, white haired and crying boy John had helped out when he had been but a small boy himself. It looked to you as if it had been the first time he had extended his hand out to someone, you made a mental note of the date, of the people concerned, of the everything.

It just so happens there are these PUMPKINS SEEDS you need to captchalogue in this place, year after year. For someone, it’s complicated, who cherishes pumpkins. So you make the trip yearly. When John refuses to go at the age of seven, you understand that the memory of the albino child has been stored away in his forgotten realm of memories.

The other boy is there when you go back however. You learn to OBSERVE him and his brother. Surely enough, he has quite the sad glow to him too. Despite the big smiles he sends your way, he seems just as sad as John. It would probably be best for them to find a friend in one another, that’s what you think to yourself.

This is the oddest, for this wish to actually come true, but carried through by the internet. There is no doubt in your mind when he waves you over to his computer’s monitor and jubilantly presents the kid sitting coolly at his own computer desk. You had heard a lot about him, and had felt disapproving at best for his cruder ways, yet it was long forgotten as you pieced his character together.

You didn't act upon this situation; AT ALL… Because. Because John was happy when at his computer, happy while speaking of the boy, he had been at his HAPPIEST having him around the house. You shouldn't mess with that, or question it, his happiness is rare enough as it is.

You are WORRIED for the most part. You've been calling up the Strider household in the past year a lot more than you had intended to. You do not know what is going on with this Dave character and neither does your son. It is hard to MEDDLE however, for the situation looks complicated enough as it is, it always has. It was odd enough to see such a young man taking care of someone who obviously needed a lot. You aren't one to judge though, for such a serious man you weren't so fit to raise a sad child, now adult.

You’re worried mostly because this week is your week of annual gathering which includes some FRESH NEW PUMPKIN SEEDS. Upon arriving this morning, you had stumbled over someone who had at first seemed DECEASED. Now that you know they aren't, you are even more worried. Because you have just tripped over Dave Strider’s body and- and he had showed up to this ritual of visiting this place, unlike last year.

He is ALONE, SHADELESS, and his skin is clearly BURNT.

There is no doubt in mind that you will help him. Even when he blearily blinks his eyes open, only for a second, to assess who had found him, and your blood turns cold at their vividly red color. It’s not that you hadn't expected them to be of such a color, that much had always been obvious, they are STARTLING nonetheless, and perhaps seem violent in more ways than simply their color. You trust you are making the right decision however, because when his eyes do shut closed, a smirk upturns the teenager’s lips and he breathes a deep sigh of relief. If anything, he had planned this one out to meet you here.

“Is that invitation still up for grabs?” He asks tiredly from his spot on the grass.

John had asked REPEATEDLY, more like begged you, to rescue his best friend from what seemed to be an awful home life. There wasn't much you could do, but when he asked, you assured him it was alright to invite Dave for a permanent stay; for entirely selfish reasons of course. Because you were betting on John’s also would be permanent happiness.

Refusing isn't even an option.

It’s not much later that he is seated in your car and that you are both on your way to Washington. His eyes are shut and you offer to stop by some small shop to get him a pair of sunglasses, he refuses for some unexplainable reason. It’s a long car ride, and you are not too sure you can uphold this silence. What you WANT to do is call John and tell him that you are finally putting this rescue plan into motion, but that’s not really what it is, and you don’t really know how to approach it at all. What you do INSTEAD is glance furtively at the now grown up man and wonder about his wellbeing.

He only speaks once during this car ride, you don’t stop on the way to rest somewhere, you are too pressed to go back home, you know this to be DANGEROUS, but the notion of sleep seems far away. He only speaks once, and in no way does it seem to open up to the possibility of conversation.

“Ever since I can remember, crows would sneak into my bedroom.”

You are not too sure why he is telling you, you, sort of already knew to begin with. As you came to bring up some cake to John from time to time, you would see the other boy on the screen and the technological mess that was his room, sometimes noticing a stray crow somewhere in the decor. You had found it extremely FUNNY, especially considering how your son was oblivious to such details.

As he begun to speak, it was confirmed that this illusion of hilarity was about to be shattered.

“It was cool, ‘cause I mostly stayed in that room. I never hung out with people, but they would be around and…”

And to you, a boy hanging out with birds seemed to be a lot lonelier than a boy who was simply always by himself.

“Recently, they haven’t been able to sneak in,” he adds with a hint of nostalgia, as if he could come to regret leaving the animals behind.

You try to concentrate, to keep your eyes on the road, it’s a bit harder than expected, for his eyes have opened. It was about time, you’re driving across states in the middle of the night, he was entirely ABLE to keep them opened. There is a veil of shyness to his eyes though, you expect it must be because of the little light they had absorbed through his lifespan. This child, adult, person, was confusing you. It was the second person in your life with whom you met and who happened to be GENUINELY SAD.

“I hadn't thought of it before, but; I’m the caged bird, it’s me,” he laughs in defeat, eyes ducking behind white lashes once more.

You’re not sure if he hears you when you speak next.

“I bet you will be an excellent flyer.”

You want to add that you will be proud of him then, but you remember that he is NOT your kid and already has enough parental issues as it is.

He, however, did hear you.

“Well, I wouldn't bet on it,” he closes the short exchange coldly and evenly.

Your IDENTITY doesn't matter all that much, but you have decided that YOU will bring happiness to the two SAD boys in your life.  
They’re nineteen now, it would be about time.


	8. Chapter 8

** XIX-II **   


  

YOUR NAME IS JOHN EGBERT AND YOU ARE NINETEEN YEARS OLD AND AND- 

YOU ARE FLYING  //  down the stairs.

Up until recently you had judged your father’s habits to be OVERBEARING.  Example, when your father would take a leave of absence as he had done this week, he would call you twice; once when he woke up and a second time at the end of the day.  Also, he fed you the same lines on both occasions, one every day of his leave, making it not only OVERBEARING, but also UNNECESSARY.  Your views on this hadn't been questioned, UP UNTIL RECENTLY. 

You are NINETEEN and having your father ring you up over the extent of this week for these trivial things shouldn't be anything more than tedious.  HOWEVER, this week just happens to be quite the harsh week for you.  Dave Strider, proclaimed best friend and second love of your life has run away from home, or has had something dreadful happen to him.  You want to say it was about time, you want to say that he had done the right thing…  You aren't sure you like being alone in the house while you wait for this to unfold, wait for some sign of life.  It doesn't help that summer is at its peak and there are no such things as classes for you to attend.  You don’t have a summer job either or anything similar, you were supposed to take this break as the opportunity to RELAX.

So you didn't want to be alone, but your father’s calls had been particularly annoying as he repeated the same trivial things, you didn't have time to waste on that, you were too busy pining for some sign from Dave.  Then the calls had stopped, over twenty-four hours ago.  That’s when you stopped thinking of it as overbearing and useless, you began thinking of it as quite COMFORTING. 

What if- something had happened to both Dave and your father?  You would have next to no one left in your life.  Well, anyway, there would only be two girls left in your life.  That’s too frightening.  That is just not even a possibility.

You tried to contact him of course, to no avail.  Then you had pretty much pulled an all-nighter, switching from staring at your screen through a veil of tears in hopes of a blink of red and walking over to the window and scrutinizing the driveway.  No one had heard of Dave and so speaking to what could be the only people in your future as of now, didn't exactly help all that much.  They were just as concerned as you were and couldn't quite bring themselves to mask entirely their equal worries for your sake.

But perhaps you will be the one able to quell their worries in the end.

A few seconds ago, not even.  The sound of tires on asphalt had pulled you away from your computer screen where you had been keeping up your vigilant lookout despite your sleepless state.  You hadn't even been expecting the old worn out car, you had expected a passerby as it had been for all the previous times you had rushed to your window’s side.

A miracle perhaps, your father, home, two days early.  Stepping out the car in the same fashion he had always used for the better part of your life, as if he was clown escaping it for some gig.  Relief, so much relief, to the point that OVERBEARING isn't even a thing that still exists to you.

You’re not too sure how to qualify your relationship with your parent, after all the only friends you have ever had have the worst possible examples of typical family relationships.  Rose who fought valiantly in some passive-aggressive never-ending battle with her mother, Jade who pretended her grandfather was as strict as ever even though he was quite deceased, and Dave-

You’re not too sure how to qualify your relationship with your parent, but he had held you on the few occasions at which important aspects of your reality were crumbling down.  This is one of those moments.  As soon as you saw him, you had wanted to run up to him and let you hold you and tell you that he was proud of you.  Proud of you no matter how horrible of a friend you might be making yourself out to be.  You just really needed someone to tell you that this Dave thing was fixable.

So that had been your intent, to fly down the stairs and cry into your father’s arms.  It doesn't matter that you’re nineteen.  You were frightened and scared and you can’t ever remember feeling that way.  That had been until you take conscience that not absolutely everything was as unchanged as it should be.  When you heard the second slam of the door, you were alarmed.  What had happened?  Who could your father possibly be bringing home?  Were you in trouble somehow? 

There were some details that you absorbed automatically and which you did not process until you were out of your room; the bag thrown over his shoulder, the absence of eyewear, the hesitant movements, there was really only one thing you had to note before getting down there as quickly possible.  And that was the head of white hair that peeked out from the other side of the car.

This is why you are currently FLYING down the stairs.

You don’t even think your feet TOUCHED the stairs, you have become the air, zipping out of the door, not even recalling if it had been opened in the first place.  It’s only once you are in the driveway you know too well that you pause, when he is finally in full sight.  The picture had barely shifted since you had left your room, it had been as if there had been a stitch in time, something to permit you to arrive right away.  As if someone had decided to bend time so that you would not be apart from him for any longer.

Your father turns to you, beaming a smile as he pockets back the set of keys.  Dave’s knees buckle.

Or so you think, he sort of falters and leans onto the car for support, as if he had just ran all the way here, though he must have been locked away in that car for quite some time.  You think to yourself that he’s done a lot more than run all the way here.  You think of all the emotional strain he’s suffered through these last years.  You think the relief he must be feeling is even greater than yours.

His gaze is just as weak as his posture, faltering just as heavily, though attempting eye contact over and over again.  You've never really thought about the color red all that much.  What it meant throughout your life could essentially be summed up to: ‘ _Good, Dave is online.’_ The red sealed away in his eyes gives you this odd feeling, one that constricts your throat and fills your head with air.  Symbolically the color might be related to passion, to violence, to pain, to love…  In this case it is but the thief of your breath, but, for some reason, this seems like an extraordinary feat to you.

For someone who had rushed down the stairs, you are awfully still.  You might have heard your father chuckle a bit, but there is no reaction from your part.  You are standing, hands heavy by your side, and mouth gaping only slightly.  It had been more than two years since you had last seen him.

It’s not _just_ the way he is leaning against the vehicle, he genuinely looked WEAKER.  Lost weight perhaps, impossibly managed to pale, not to mention the contours of his sunburn, also lost the indescribable edges of laughter that adorned his presence.  He also looked STRONGER to you.  On the edge of crying perhaps, but accepting it as he kept his eyes revealed, determined to stare right into things he should have been too weak to confront.  He looked FREE to say it all, as if the light backpack could be some symbol of that.

“Hey Egbert,” he says quietly.

And you remember that he is actually here; IN FRONT OF YOUR HOUSE.  And all you have been doing is making sure you get a good eyeful of him.  HE was probably so exhausted from all of this, all he wanted probably was some support.  Maybe it was close to what you had felt up in your room, when you had wanted nothing more than to be able to load your worries onto someone else.  You remember that Dave has no father for that, you remember that Dave has just run off from the only family figure in his life.

You think wind has carried you again and that time has stopped to permit it again.

He is in your arms, and doesn't seem to have enough force to shift all of his weight (how little may it be) from the car to your form.  But he collapses onto you nonetheless, head falling forward, in what you personally think is some maneuver to blink the light out of his eyes, and his hands balling up into fists over that spot between the end of your ribcage and your stomach.

You decide to reply with the simple syllable of “Yo!” thinking this might just be the sort of uncool thing he would have used.

He laughs in return, a broken and exhausted laugh, but you wouldn't have expected anything else.  Your palms press down on his back, the sharpness of his shoulder blades taking you by surprise, you step forward nonetheless, even though it proves to be almost impossible.  There is something just so FAMILIAR about him, and it’s much too powerful for someone you had only met in the flesh once before.  There is this certitude inside of you that he is supposed to be here and that makes it all a lot better.

“Sure took you long enough,” you joke, but really there is no humor left in your reservoir.  The week of nail-biting and worrying had sapped it completely.

There is no change in the position or in the atmosphere, the words catch you off guard anyway.

“Yeah, I’m sorry John,” he replies quite honestly.

Even then, you still want to pull him in closer, so much CLOSER.  Your left hand drags to the head of snowy hair and you push down.  This time, the tears touch your exposed collarbone.  He is crying, silently, as he does everything else.

You can’t come to understand his sentiment of apology.  In no way was it a reproach, you attempt to communicate this.

“No, no it’s fine-“

“I’m so sorry,” he chokes out.

After that it becomes a web of messy ‘sorry’s.  Your feeling of relief quickly shifts to one of curiosity.  Just what had happened at home?  What were his feelings regarding the happenings?

Why was there this need to apologize?

It’s only much longer, after you've sufficiently rubbed his back and cooed into his ear, that you are able to lead him to your doorway.  Your father fusses near the both of you, but you can’t find it in you to find it too parental.  This feels just right, you want help, assistance, you want to make sure Dave is alright.

Said boy doesn't seem to want to give the impression that the episode had even occurred.  He is sniffing proudly, and mindlessly rubbing at his eyes, which were now matching with the redness of his blotchy skin. 

Even without the cool kid shades, he gives the impression that his reflexes are still one of a cool kid’s.

You are happy beyond belief.  He’s made it this far.  And you’re together.

However, you can’t shake off the feeling that had taken over you in the driveway.  You want him CLOSER CLOSER CLOSER, ALL THE TIME.

 

 

 

YOUR NAME IS DAVE STRIDER YOU ARE SOMEHOW STILL NINETEEN AND AND-  
AND YOU ARE SINKING   //    in regret and remorse and insecurity and fear and weakness and…

You’re getting ahead of yourself here.  Actually you have PRESUMABLY found your haven, a safe place, somewhere where your broken hopes can mend and your emotional wounds can scar over.  What you need is TIME, you think, you also think that this shouldn't be so hard to find.  You have this affinity with time, as where others worry over their future, you have always felt at EASE with the concept of time.  Seconds ticking away appear to you as bittersweet lullabies.

It had been time to get out of there.

And though you are irrevocably sinking, there had been something about hopping out of that car.  Something that had urged you to keep your eyes open when John Egbert had appeared.  It wasn't a life ring, it wasn't anything that would save you from sinking, it was something much different.  It was the light at the surface of the water, the light that could never make its place in your life.  Let’s put it this way, it was the promise that your fight had a cause, that there was something for you to reach.  Not a promise that you COULD reach it, but a promise that it very well EXISTED.

It was funny how John had given you space.  Because that is quite obviously what you needed.  And yet, you had followed after him like some lost boy, which you suppose you have ALWAYS been throughout this relationship.  Of course, he relished in it, and it became even more obvious that what he had wanted from the start was to shower you with too much attention and too much care.

So you had unpacked, finding yourself back into his bedroom as if your place had been reserved this whole time, as a matter of fact the mattress you had used back then was conveniently in place.  He had fussed offer the small amount of belongings and had started listing off all the wonderful things you could go out to shop for.

At your reluctance he had probably guessed PHOTOPHOBIA, you didn't care to pile AGORAPHOBIA on top and cause any more trouble.

After that he had started listing off what you could borrow from him to expand this small collection of personal belongings.  You don’t care to admit that you would love sharing his things, but you still would and do.

After that he had fretted over your skin and you had let him skim his fingers over the expanse of your skin and under your clothing as to assess to where the damage had spread.  When you had found yourself alone in the bathroom after his elaborate indications as to how to heal your damaged skin (which was such a relief because this WAS your place of healing) and were expected to use his shower and things as if they were your own, you might have panicked a little.  You might also have called out for him to stay near the door and to not leave you alone.

He had done as you said and you've got this sneaking suspicion that he believes this is a temporary thing, an aftereffect of recent traumatic events, you still don’t have the heart to admit that this might be an irreversible thing and you just might need someone near you at all times, and that person should preferably be JOHN EGBERT.

It didn't feel as if you were still IN REAL LIFE.  Then again neither does it feel as it had felt when you had escaped from real life, and you don’t mean away and onto the internet.  Then again you don’t know what you mean exactly by that.

It felt as if TIMEOUT.  Which was fairly understandable, after all it was your VERY FIRST day in somewhere SAFE but not CONSTRICTING.  It might have something to do with the soft glow of things.  You aren't used to any sort of variation of light.  However, the Egbert residence had been dimmed down to a point that would accommodate you, surprisingly, it wasn't all too painful.  It really only served to add this ETHEREAL aspect to your safe feelings.

Everything was considerably gentler, even in the midst of summer.  The sheets and pillows were cool around you, the lights were still soft and…  You were breathing easily.  Fresh air, you’d finally been able to break through.  FRESH AIR FRESH AIR FRESH AIR.

“Uh,” John’s voice transcends into this personal bubble of fresh air and pulls you back to attention.

You know it’s too early for you to be dying in the makeshift bed, but you feel you have earned the right to REST, it HAS been a pretty fucking long day.  Maybe he just wants to tell you something sappy.  You aren't stupid enough to think that your pesterlogs had been anything but strained in recent months.  He was probably happy to have you back, you hope he is, because you don’t really have anywhere else to go.

So you’ll indulge him, only for a little while.

“What?”

But you don’t actually lift your head off the pillows or anything.

“I’ll just be on the computer for a little while and then I’ll turn the lights off, okay?” He says gently, just as gently as the lighting.

Speaking of which, he spoke the word ‘lights’ as if it were even more fragile than you, as if it were an important and grandiose word, and you guess it sort of is.  It’s hard to feel anything but thankful towards him.

“I don’t see who you would want to chat with, considering that I am right here,” you grumble out anyway, surprising even yourself as your need for undeterred attention doubles in rating.

“Oh you know, just, uhm…  Our other two friends?” He tries hesitantly, literally wording his feelings in the same way he would type them down.

You feel pretty awful.  It’s not that you had forgotten them…!  You really just needed that TIMEOUT.  You needed to crawl under the covers and sleep it off for a while, remember that it is up to you to define yourself now.  Try to untangle the layers of irony and sincerity and lies and whatnot.

Okay, you’d forgotten.  But, in your defense, you are sure all four of you are pretty apt to FORGET.

“Yeah sure.”

Your reply does not fall as coolly as you hoped it would have.  Then again, you aren't really all that cool, are you?

For a while there is a lot of keyboard smashing and eventually you understand that he gives in to urgent requests to get his ass onto the video conference.  You just stay completely still, trying to remember just when breathing had become difficult again.

“John!  What is wrong with you?  Why were you stalling?”

A grin ghosts your lips as you take in the screeching voice, counting down the days since you had last heard Harley’s voice.  They might have not heard yours before, but you sure used to get an earful, until it became quite the mission to even obtain a computer that could support the video streaming.  Your blood turns cold instead of cool as your memory sweeps you back into the locked tower that your apartment had become.

“Uh, stuff?” He tried emotively, and somehow permitting for the ghost of the grin to bloom fully.

Subtlety, definitely was never going to be your best friend’s forte.

“I can’t help but to inquire what ‘stuff’ you may be referring to that could possibly defuse your attention from relaying your advances on our search for Strider.”

It was hard for you not to snicker at Rose’s over the top ways.  Mostly, mostly there was now this inaccessible dream that maybe one day you could have all three of your friends surrounding you and laughing with you.  You think the only circumstances would be amidst an apocalypse., anything else makes little sense.

“Uh, well, I don’t know, but Strider found!  Abort all searches!” He exclaims lightly, despite his heavy laughing.

Wow, well, at least if you wound up being uncool after all, you will have this one friend that is a  lot less cooler than you, no matter how uncool that may be.

“John?”

“What?”

The two replies were simultaneous, though the first had been spoken in brevity as if to maintain the statuesque speech, while the other was impossibly dragged out in badly concealed excitement.

“Everything is a-okay,” he explained in the lamest of manners.

The outbursts of female curiosity were really no surprise, but as you sat up, you could see, despite the agonizing glare of the computer screen, that it had shocked John as he opened and closed his mouth in attempts to save his situation.

You did it on a whim.  Crossing the space of the bedroom and leaning onto Egbert’s shoulder to get a good view of the screen.  You blinked the pain away, or tried, and failed completely at smiling in reassurance.  Instead, you handed out your trusty greeting.

“Yo.”

Jade burst into tears, John relaxed under you and Rose of course had an issue, as always.

“I assume you are well aware that it was incredibly risky; for you to elope with such a predicament.  A predicament, that had it been shared would have discouraged me from supporting your absconding.”

The headache is hitting full force as you are semi-conscious of John turning his sky eyes towards you, as if he were afraid of an explosion.  He was right of course, this was the last thing you had wanted.  You didn't want to be read easily.  You didn't want for someone to take a glance your way and to proclaim you as the weak, albino kid.  Too bad, because this seems to be your reality.

“As per usual, you are so far away from making sense Lalonde.”

It’s just a bit too snappy to not pass off as a mechanism of defense.

Jade picks the moment to intervene through her heartfelt sobs.

“Oh Dave, we don’t care about your pigmentation and shit, we are just so glad to know you’re safe with John!”

You suppose Jade enters John’s category of clueless.  It isn't merely about pigmentation and Rose might have just sensed that or deduced it from your shifting and avoidant eyes.

“John, I suggest you return Dave home as he most certainly needs someone who understands his condition by his side,” she proclaims surgically, forgetting of all the fears and anxieties you had gone over with her through chats.

You’ll defend your right to be in the Egbert household until death, so you think as you open your mouth, anger building in a need to preserve the haven and the place of fresh air.

John beats you to it.

“Rose I don’t think you should be treating me as the ignorant one.  You’re the one who doesn't really get this.  I've had a couple of years to figure this one out, unlike you.”

The words die on your lips, Rose’s looks of knowing all die just as quickly.  It dawns to her that perhaps you haven’t shared everything with her in the same way you had with John.

The moment quickly passes and you find yourself giving overly dramatic ‘thank you’s to the two girls who had hung in there with you so far.

You don’t feel as if you could have faced them without the presence of John by your side.

You don’t feel as if there is much you could do without his presence by your side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for 100 kudos and just everything ;__;


	9. Chapter 9

** XX **

 

You are named JOHN EGBERT, you are TWENTY YEARS OLD.

Your birthday is   //    TODAY.

April thirteenth is typically a great day to celebrate your birthday on, despite the occasional Friday the thirteenths.  There was a quality about spring you particularly enjoyed, the lightheartedness it seemed to inspire and the accompanying sensations. 

What was going on today however was a bit of an exception.  This is possibly the first birthday you spend completely snowed in.  You, of course, are being melodramatic.  It’s not as if you were trapped or HOMESTUCK or anything, there was simply this light, feathery, coat of white over the landscape.  You take this as the chance to skip your college classes.  Not an attitude that is yours usually, but you tell yourself you are relatively safe considering that many others have probably jumped to the excuse.  Anyhow it’s your BIRTHDAY, it’s SNOWING, and Dave is finally stepping outside.

So the snowing part and the Dave part probably aren't coexisting PERFECTLY, and yeah, granted, these are not under any circumstances the perfect parameters for what will surely be the best birthday of your life, but hey, it is what it is.  Anyhow, you are under the impression that…  No birthday will ever compare to one in particular, but you forget which one that is supposed to be.

You’d been considerably worried for a while, when he first arrived here.  For someone who was practically offing himself to get a taste of freedom, he locked himself quickly enough into your house.  Your father insisted that this was perfectly normal, but you were, as you have said, WORRIED.  You’d tried time and time again to shove him outside, even under your father’s disapproving gaze, but nothing did it.

At one point he promised he would go out walking with you once winter had settled over, and you had to agree that it was fair.  You had to agree that summer days weren't best for avoiding light.

Maybe you should have thought it through.

When you’d basically assaulted him, singing that winter had finally showed its face, it took you quite some time to clue in to his horrified look.  To you, the indication that winter had arrived was SNOW.  That and that only confirmed winter’s arrival.   Now, now…

What was it again?  That color or that shade that absorbed absolutely every ray of light, is it white you say?  Are you also saying that vast landscapes of snow are hard on any kid’s eyes?  Are you telling me this is the perfect environment for someone who keels over in pain when faced with too much light?  No you’re not, of course not, that would make you a DUMBASS.

So he remained inside longer still.

When December came and HE turned twenty, the snow was piling up higher than ever.  The three of you celebrated inside and it was amazing.  Everything about Dave was amazing, you just, maybe, sometimes, worried over him and worried that you were doing to him just what his brother had done wrong.  You were afraid that there wasn't enough SPACE for Dave and all of his being, yet he clung on to you and stayed behind walls.

You’d offered him new shades on his birthday.  They were RIDICULOUSLY expensive and RIDICULOUSLY fashionable and he had HATED THEM, or claimed to anyway.  The day after that, he hopped into your father’s car, glasses firmly in place, and you had driven him to the nearest ocular shop of some sorts.

He had gotten the UGLIEST and CHEAPEST pair and had scrambled back into the car, dodging away from people as if he were highly contagious.  You expect you should have pulled some psychoanalytic conclusions from this, instead you just found it to be oddly charming and endearing.  You had it pretty bad for Dave Strider, that was a fact.

It somehow transited into a ritual, every fortnight or so, he would request to go out to buy another pair and he would hold his breath unless he was in the confines of the car.  You guess it might be a tad irksome, what with all the shades laying around and stepping on a discarded pair’s edge every once in a while.  He almost never wore them too, letting them sit on top of his head or folded over the material of his shirt.  He’d wear them to go back to the store.

When all of the snow had melted away and you had essentially found that lightheartedness back into your landscape, you turned back to being insistent.  Then, instead of the viable excuses he had been supplying so far, he aimed for weak and lame ones.  To tell the truth, you were scared that if he put it off any longer he would never be able to escape the house again.

You pushed too much though and in a particularly violent argument, he had escaped from you and had ceased his shadow act, no longer following you around the house, but aiming for the other side now.  That week had been pretty rough, he had worn shades the whole time, pink ones with star frames.

Back when he had bought the pair you had shoved his shoulder lightly and whispered under your breath; “You’re the star, it’s you!”

He laughed, uneasily, and shakily.  You learned that for someone who you had joked around with a lot, Dave seemed to feel a certain horror towards jokes.  You learned to not make fun of him or the things he did, ever, even if you knew your heart to be in the right place when you did feel the urge to laugh at him.

By the end of that week, last month, he had shaken you awake, which was a first.  For some reason, you were more STARTLED awake than anything else, there was something in the pits of your stomach, a horrific ache you couldn't quite place, but he was there, pink star shades gone.

“I’ll walk with you on your birthday!”

It sounded a bit panicked to be honest.  Actually, you had woken up from a nightmare, you had deduced as much the morning after.  Maybe you weren't as prone to night terrors as you had been in the past, but your rest isn't exactly PEACEFUL.  You must have shouted at Dave throughout your nightmare or something, something must have urged him to throw himself into the lion’s pit as he had done.

Today is your birthday.  Dave Strider is supposed to go walking with you.  There is snow EVERYWHERE.

You've been easing him into this one for weeks.  You spoke of budding leaves, and fluttering butterflies and a bunch of other details that can only be categorized as gay bullshit.  He had thought you were making fun of him at first, but once it became clear that you do have a soft spot for spring time, he too had softened up.

You tried to ease him into this deception of remaining inside after all as well.  Or you’d TRIED, because even after glancing out the window and flinching away, he had categorically refused to keep inside.  Your father had smiled at you as Dave had rushed up the stairs and you’d felt a bit lighter.

It’s been some time since you've TRULY tried to accomplish something.  There had been a point in life where you had sort of butted heads with motivation.  You’d felt as if you had completed something amazing already, there was no real need for you to try to do anything else.  A strange feeling perhaps, but when you’d spoken of it both to the girls and Dave, it had seemed shared enough.  So this ‘Make sure Dave is super-duper happy’ project really was close to your heart. 

You’re hoping you’re succeeding.

Finally the both of you make a dash out of the house.  He’s wearing those fancy sunglasses you’d gotten him, they were very large on his face, but he did seem quite handsome.  You wonder if he’d actually disliked the pair or had made a scene to test the grounds and go shopping for cheap shit.  Your blue scarf is wrapped tightly around his neck.  You are only wearing your spring jacket on top of your clothes really.

The world looked like a winter wonderland, but it was still fairly warm and the snow was anything but heavy and deep.

Oh yeah.  He also brought his camera.  Even though you didn't ask about the light and how he was feeling, he started babbling incessantly.  He told you he could get used to wearing shades again, he told you there was nothing too bad about the world when his vision was darkened.  He told you he really just wanted to go outside to take pictures.  He told you a spring environment covered in snow was just as fucking ironic as it could get and that he wanted to snap pictures of it.  He told you to not expect this to become a daily occurrence.

He didn't tell you he had wanted to keep his promise.  He didn't tell you how useless it felt to take pictures with shades on.  He didn't tell you that he thought the world looked very beautiful like this and that was his reason to document it.  He didn't tell you he was happy to be out with you. 

But you didn't need for him to say any of that, you kind of, sort of, already knew.

You make jokes the whole time, but not about him, never about him.  He snaps pictures randomly, and tries to glance above his sunglasses from time to time.

“I thought you wanted pictures of the ironic landscape!”

You give up after a while as he keeps snapping pictures of you instead.  He only shrugs as a reply.

The next time you TRULY smile to his lens; he stops taking pictures after that.

He stops in the middle of the road, only a few streets away from your house, as a matter of fact you've really only been going in circles.  Hands you the camera; HANDS YOU THE CAMERA!  You haven’t been allowed to touch it, like ever, and sometimes he’ll talk to it, you’re pretty sure he’s given it some overly girly name too.  You go completely still, but you’re pretty sure that’s what he wanted you to do, because he takes the moment to compose himself and to slide his shades upwards.  There is that moment when his eyes remain closed and you can tell that he is in sync with the breeze, that he is breathing as if he is truly part of this world.  In these moments you always think he looks something like a beauty model, because of that brief pause, then you remember how sad it actually is and you feel shallow for harboring such thoughts.

You are always a bit surprised by his face.  In essence, yeah, he should be terribly handsome, you don’t know if it’s the scheme of white that has such a SOFTENING effect, but mostly he looks like a fairytale creature, too soft to breathe the same air as you.  You love him a lot.

And when his eyelids flutter open and the vivid red absorbs the world in, you make sure to give him your grandest and goofiest smile.  He doesn't blink or flinch, he speaks clearly.

“Happy birthday Egbert.”

It must be that spot of red in the oceans of white that highlights his loneliness.  It must be that blue scarf that made you want to step in closer.  He’s in your arms in a matter of seconds.

You just might have met the most beautiful person on Earth.  The universe possibly, all universes even.

 

 

 

Your name is DAVE STRIDER you are TWENTY YEARS OLD.

TODAY IS   //    Sunday.

Sundays are your favorite days.  They have been for…  The better part of the year now.  It’s not because John doesn't have classes on Sunday, if that was all there was to it, your favorite days would also include Saturdays.  So no, that is wrong wrong WRONG.  Let’s get one thing completely straight.  If there is only one day of the week on which you feel at HOME here, it is undeniably Sunday.

Not to be rude or ungrateful or impolite.  Because anyway, it’s not as if you EVER dislike it here.  This is where you were meant to be, you know so.  It was mapped out for you, time had given you this and just wasn't about to take it back.  It just came to be a bit lonely, alright?  John went to school and Dad went to work and you tried your best to be useful and productive.  But they didn't want that from you, not really.  They wanted you to relax and to feel at home and blah, blah, blah.

Unfortunately, you weren't so terrific at doing that.  You felt a bit like a stranger in this house, not because you were literally unrelated to the duo, but because…  You felt alone.  Not just when the house was empty, but especially when you were tagging along with John.  You felt this CRUSHING SADNESS, and once again you typically feel TRAPPED in complicated feelings you can’t possibly share with anyone.

_On Sundays, you feel as if you are the one who least understands CRUSHING SADNESS._

You’re getting ahead of yourself.  Truth be told you are just as MELODRAMATIC as you had once been when you had attempted to be someone else entirely.  You can’t shrug it off, you've just got this thing about exaggerating.  Everything had to be LARGER THAN LIFE.  So yes, this loneliness thing is actually a thing that you have going on, however…  However, you are insanely happy to be here.

It’s exactly like what living with your best friend sounds like.  Utter perfection, at most times. 

So yeah it’s as easy as breathing and pretty fucking natural to the both of you, but there are also these really weird moments?

One time, you’d been messing about, completely forgetting to touch the bag John had brought back from the video game rental store.  And when the sun had set and you’d discarded the pair of heart shaped shades, you’d remembered the bag, sliding the shades back down in the aim of actually playing the games. 

To remind him, you had told him; “Hey so, about the game.”

You forget why you hadn't said ‘game **s** ’, that’s just how it had come out!  You wouldn't thought he’d have felt it too…  But he paused in the same way you did.

The answer had been undeniably close, just above your heads probably, but you ended up downing the night away with games and wondering about the identity of that one forgotten game.

That’s just one of many.  There are like these trigger words, but you can’t fathom what they are triggering to.  You just know that in this particular endeavor, you are not alone AT ALL.  Even Dad joins in with some misplaced looks too.  

You get pretty fed up though, with the same old, same old.

Your eyes mostly.  It’s a lot better though!  When you are home alone you often speak to Jade, sometimes Rose if she isn't being too irksome.  You aren't so tongue-tied as when you had been a teenager.  And your secrets have long evaporated.

It’s just this whole COMPASSION deal that really has your gut twisted up.  Let’s speak in the sincerest of ways.  For as nice and as caring John can be, though you also know he has a side that calls for him being kind of a douche for his pranks; well he just doesn't get it, okay?

He’ll humor all of your little quirks.  Sometimes he’ll joke about your skin color and the look on your face will shut him up.   He is really just as easygoing and as acceptant as he should be.

There is this MAJOR ISSUE though.  His eyes are just fine.  And you know how selfish you are coming off to be, but this is seriously how you feel!  He can’t possibly ever understand and so you are just a bit reserved and just a bit strained when you are with him.  See, you once had this friend who was blind and it was totally fun and normal for you to relax with her, because shit, shit you guys were so retarded when it came to light.

Well, okay.  That sounds made-up.  And in all honesty, you can’t recall a face, a color, a smell, a name.  This person doesn't seem as if she ever existed.  But the principle is the same!  It would be easier to be around someone who is blind.  Not that you would PREFER this person, you would just be more apt to relax.  You still try to play the strong card around John.  Even though he’s obviously not fooled by that.

Point is, for all that your memory is worth (jack shit apparently), you like to forget that genetic issues aren't things all people deal with, BUT…  But everyone has their own issues of different natures.

It’s hard to forget on Sundays.

So John does this thing where he is really talented at a lot of things, right?  You wouldn't ever be able to do such a thing, but let’s not get into that.  Anyhow, he works hard, but in a way that doesn't give out clues that he is indeed WORKING.  It’s more like he is PLAYING, everything is fun to him.  And so, piano lessons every day.  And he works hard, but actually you hear his laughter over the melodies more often than not.  And he plays a lot of light hearted and exaggeratedly happy stuff.

When this happens, day after day at five in the afternoon, you sit in the staircase and slouch, let your head slump and your eyes tear up behind some cheap pair of joke shades.  Funny how you still get this need to hang on to comedic things when you’ll eternally feel branded by the title of ‘just a big joke’.

You listen to his music and you feel SO FUCKING ALONE.  He might be in the same house, but he is nowhere near you, he is somewhere where pianos sing and sad little Strider boys can deal with their own sadness.

Today is Sunday.  His piano tutor doesn't come on Sundays.  He loves to play on Sundays, at five in the afternoon, and laugh at the silly little things he has to play during the week.  Then he improvises on the instrument, sometimes he’ll write some notes down, sometimes he’ll stop halfway through, most of the time he would pick up again, sometimes he didn't.

The first month you’d been living here had been hectic.  You prefer not to speak of it.  It wasn't until John returned to class that he picked his piano playing back up.  You weren't at all surprised by his playing.  Then Sunday had come around, and by then, by then you’d already gotten used to mopping in the staircase.

Saddest fucking shit you ever heard.  No really, rip your heart, spit on your soul, and finish off your eyes sad kind of shit.  You’d been SO CONFUSED.  You had cried, not out of frustration over your loneliness, but because it felt as if someone had decided to whisper to you and to tell you; Hey look, the rest of the world is so much sadder than you are.

You can’t explain why it had hurt so badly.

When John had found you hours later, when you hadn't returned to jogging behind him as you usually reverted to, he had been understandably worried.

You spat an excuse about your brother and things long forgotten, because that was infinitely easier to say than to admit that he was such a sad boy and that it came to be quite DEVASTATING.

Following that, you had sat with him on the piano bench for every single Sunday and you FORCED yourself to be cool with it and to only comment on his composing genius and he’d laugh off the compliments, as if not understanding the insurmountable sadness pouring out of the musical instrument.

This is where you are right now.  You feel his hip shift against yours with every four counts as he pressed down on the pedal robotically.  His elbow would brush against yours from time to time.  And your breathing slowed down to his pace, because he BREATHED his music, and being one with music is always a thing you want to do.

Summer is coming up.

You are so incredibly happy here.

“I think you just might be the saddest person I have ever met.”

You haven’t ever spoken while he played.  At first you think the music has drowned your comment out, it would be better that way.  You don’t know what had just come over you.

He stops playing.

Somewhere in your memory, a dam is broken and in floods all of the conversations you've ever had with his father.  About John being a sad person specifically and just how hard he worked for his son to be happy and how you had tried your best over the year to learn all of the tricks that could bring about some happiness.

You remember him teaching you to bake one day and then leading you to his mother’s portrait in the living room, speaking softly of her own cooking.  Once again it had hurt, because he was just some sad old man too.  And you are just TOO HAPPY to be THIS SAD.  But oh well.

_Oh well_.

You are more than sure telling John this has never been a part of the ‘how to make John Egbert happy’ protocol.

You’d said it anyway.

Today he stops halfway through, but he doesn't start again.  His hands are barely brushing the piano’s keys, he is trying to keep them in place, but he has stopped playing.  His eyes tend to follow the movements of his hands, as if he is always surprised by the paths his hands picked and wanted to stare at them in astonishment.  His eyes remain glued to his hands, despite their stillness.

He isn't smiling or laughing anymore.

“Dave, shut up,” he says rigidly.

So you do.  But you can tell he actually wants you to speak up.  He wants you to take it back, or to explain yourself, or to comfort him.  You just sit there with the default face you've pasted on for the rest of your life.

“Shut up,” he repeats as an afterthought.

He isn't crying. 

You think it would be nice if he tried crying for once.


	10. Chapter 10

** XX-II **

 

Your name is John Egbert.

You are twenty years old.

//    You are SO angry with your father.

In the principle of things, you tend to shy away from harboring anger for your father.  There has been this boundary, your whole life, an unmentionable and unstoppable one that read, with great neon signs: “THIS MAN DOES SO MUCH FOR YOU”.  You’d say it’s fairly mature for you to have understood the concept right away, but you don’t really know any better.  You don’t have friends so to speak of to demonstrate the example of an UNGRATEFUL CHILD.

You just think you are ridiculously blessed and that you are obligated to swallow down any reproach you may hold against him.  Let’s look at this objectively.  You've got three friends.  Three friends who just happen to have quite a reduced family situation, as you do.

There’s DAVE of course.  Raised by his older brother, and in a way, you think he might have been blessed too.  But at some point it had completely blown over.  Someone imposing a personality on you day after day might get to be too much.  See you wouldn't have that problem with your father, ever.  He actually does the opposite!  He tries his best to fit YOUR interests!

Then there’s ROSE, oh gosh, she’s something!  If anything, she is the closest to your situation.  The sole other occupier of her house (you like to call it a mansion) is her mother and she too seems to take a liking to Rose’s interests.  Your friend however does not take too well to this.  And sometimes, sometimes you can’t help but to think it must be pretty harsh being raised by someone who has so many unsolved issues.  Sometimes you like to believe Rose’s tales on her mother’s alcoholism, but only when she is thoroughly upset.

Now, JADE…  You suppose you don’t really know about her whole family situation.  You are taking a wild guess and saying it’s actually terrible though, because that girl sure likes to claim she was raised by a dog.  This was a detail all three of you like to laugh at…  Even if a couple of years ago Rose had asked you why you couldn't consider it as the truth.  The question had been perplexing, especially coming from her.  Whatever that is, you still don’t think she is in the best of situations.

Point is; your father ROCKS!

And he’d been seriously outdoing himself recently.  Look, he took in your best friend without even blinking, he treats him as he treats you.  There’s also this whole thing about you graduating next year and the…  The whole deal with you wanting to go do a master’s degree in genomics and how maybe you heavily hinted that the two universities offering it in this state just weren't up to your standards…  And how, instead of questioning you, had sat you down and had a long nice discussion with you on just how you should find a university where Dave could start his post-secondary studies in.

Yeah, yeah so pulling it out of Dave was excruciating.  He insisted no field of study interested him.  It was through an elaborate plan of nagging and insistence that he had finally cracked and yelled at you.

“What sort of school accepts a student in photography when they can’t do shit about lighting, huh?  Tell me John, I’d like to know!”

You had been STILL SHOCKED, don’t even try to deny it.  Even if he wasn't the COOL KID EXTRAORDINAIRE he was supposed to be, he still had a certain air of coolness, maybe not one of absolute irony, but…  The sort of cool that retained him from modifying his voice’s level or face’s expression too much.

He’d lost his shit then though, and you could only gape as he quickly scurried around for a discarded pair of shades.

He was wearing ridiculously flashy pink sunglasses when your father had swooped in and saved the situation from behind the newspaper he had been reading. 

“It would be a wise investment, seeing as your passion equals your talent.”

There had been no clarification needed and Dave had seriously gone silent afterwards.

So that’s the big plan after this year!  You are STOKED and this summer was supposed to be the best, because next summer, both of you would leave the state together, because, duh, neither one of you could have difficulties getting accepted (though you have actually no idea of Dave’s school results), this summer would be lighthearted and FUN.

Uh huh, yup, you totally hadn't forgotten that your father would eventually leave for a week, to run errands and such, go to the place that held your heart and shit like that.  It hadn't ESCAPED your mind or anything, you had just understood that it meant you would spend a week alone with Dave, for the first time…  Ever.

Okay, yeah, you can’t say that you  _hadn't forgotten_ , when actually all you did was fantasize about it.  A WEEK ALONE WITH DAVE.  Okay, no matter how supportive or fantastic your father is (though right now you are FURIOUS with him), there really is no way you are going to confess to any sort of romantic feelings for your best friend with him around.  And maybe this is just a thing you really want to do, to get off your chest.  It’s kind of hard to fight down the urge to slide stupid lovey-dovey words in the midst of your conversations.  It’s starting to take its toll honestly, you are twenty years old for goodness’ sake, this isn't the sort of teenage problem you should be dealing with.

Even at that, you wouldn't have been ANGRY with your dad had he eliminated the chances of alone time.  If he’d filled up the house with all the most intrusive people in the world (uh, Jade, and, Rose, who else do you really know?) you wouldn't have been mad.  You mean, yeah this could wait even longer.  You suppose it’s already been a few years…  Time flies you guess.  Really, time suspends itself with Dave.  You could definitely wait for next year!  By then he won’t really be able to take it badly, he’ll be stuck with you somewhere out in the country.

Whenever you think that however, this horrible feeling creeps up your spine, as if you are actually being a lot more manipulative than his brother had ever been.

When he slipped in the question, you hadn't even been angry THEN!  It was kind of his protocol, he asked it every year and every year you replied with the most resounding ‘No’ you could muster.

“Would you like to come son?”

Would you like to go to the place where you’d FALLEN IN LOVE?  Would you like to go to the place where you feel as if you BELONG?  …  Sure you would!

But there’s also that disgusting feeling in the pits of your stomach.  Every time you think of that place now, your mind is assaulted with images of Dave and you feel unbelievably GUILTY.  This is stupid, of course.  It’s not as if you are CHEATING on him.  You mean, he doesn't even suspect your feelings, of course he wouldn't, because you PRETEND THEY DON’T EXIST.  So really, your heart had been captured by someone else before him, that was just jolly fine, that had nothing to do with him.

Besides, there were other reasons you didn't go back.

What if it’s not the same as when you had been a child; what if?  THERE IS NO WHAT IF; you know it won’t be the same, and the defects in your memory already prove as much.

To this point, your father had still been in the clear.  And then, he had turned to Dave.

“And you Dave?  Would you care to come to California with me?”

Yeah okay, it had been polite, that was just fine.  What was NOT so fine was that conspiratorial look they shared.  What wasn't terribly excellent was the way the muscles of Dave's face relaxed, like it sometimes did when the two of you spoke in the darkness of your bedroom, and you would glance towards the floor, and he thought you couldn't see, but you did. That look belonged sealed away in the shadows, not to the moment that your father suggested him visiting the place where, essentially, your heart had been UNFAITHFUL.

What wasn't fine was that Dave answered with; “Fo’ sure.”

You’d interrupted of course.

“It’s not what it sounds like Dave!  He just wants to bring you to some lame pumpkin patch next to some shitty maze,” is what you said, almost desperately.

“Then just the right levels of irony for me.”

His words hadn't been sincere though, and you don’t quite know what to make of it.

Afterwards (for the next two days) you’d spent absolutely ALL of your time on trying to dissuade him, ALL OF IT!  He had been unaffected by your words to the point of almost growing tired with your antics.  That’s when you stopped, and decided to pester your father instead.

He, no matter how unlikely it may be, had MISUNDERSTOOD and took your combative ways for a plea to stay at home.

“No need to worry, you can stay behind.”

You’d frowned SO MUCH you are actually surprised you can pull any other facial expression now, well, of course, right now you are wearing THAT expression, but details, details…

“I’ll bring him back safe and sound."

Then he’d MISUNDERSTOOD AGAIN.  Thinking that you were probably frozen with the fact that he had in fact brought back Dave last time he had left (story which you still haven’t been told) and that perhaps you linked this trip to Dave’s imminent departure.  That’s not the case though…

“You know I want his happiness just as much as I want yours.”

Third time’s the charm.  Still misunderstanding you, he had thought you were concerned that he would MISTREAT Dave or something as such.  Sadly for you, his point raised another good fact.  He DID fight hard for your happiness.  You have not earned that right to be angry with him.

But you are, you are, you are, you are.  Your name is JOHN EGBERT and you are TERRIBLY angry!

The car came to a stop not even a quarter of an hour ago.  You are FURIOUS, and you aren't moving from this spot at the front of the car.  Both your father and Dave have already rushed out.  Dave scampered away with his camera and you feel this is a positive thing at the least.  You like to think he will grow up to be a famous photographer and he will be worshipped for overcoming his incapacities.  So you like seeing him with that lousy yet expensive camera.

Maybe he will be just distracted enough to not notice the crushed look on your face or how your heart is ripping in two neat halves from being here.

Then you remember who his favorite photography subject is and you come to the conclusion that your heartache will be all over his film.

You give your toothiest smile as you dig your nails into the palms of your hands, wanting to call forth the powers you hold for memory suppression.

You’re not forgetting though, and this smile is more painful than it is anything else.

 

 

 

Your name is Dave Strider.

You are twenty years old.

//    There’s really nothing else you want to add to that.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

So Mister Egbert is sort of a saint…  You guess.  Really, the question had been trotting in your mind for a few months already.  _Is he going this year?  Is he going this year?_   Of course, logically speaking, there would be no reason for him to skip his trip on this year.  The problem still remained, that was in no way insuring your lift.  You’d probably have to get there yourself, and that was a bit silly. 

Well maybe he would skip the trip, he is probably saving up his money, wanting to pay off two college tuitions.  Though you personally think John is going to roll over there on some fancy-schmancy scholarship.  And YOU are working as lamely as ever on stupid websites, secretly raking in the cash and promising to yourself that you will pay your own way, though this seems highly unrealistic.

Nevertheless, making it to that place remained your NUMBER ONE PRIORITY.  So yeah Mister Egbert has attained angelic status.  And John is a baby.

No, seriously, you mean it this time, John is a BABY.

To be fair, you had never really pondered on any of this; how John recalled the event or what it meant to him.  Doubtlessly, he had not recognized you, but you had never pulled the conclusion that he had no recollection of the day.  This was the kid who had practically shoved his hand down your pants to come to the understanding that you WERE what we could call albino.  So maybe the connection just hadn't been made yet.

You hope it’s never made.  That could easily become a lot more than mortifying.  Let’s just say that you hadn't thought he had FORGOTTEN, even though his father had always showed his face there without him.  Some idealistic part of you likes to pretend that the LONGING FOR YOU had been too much and he had avoided your place of meeting at all costs.  Most parts of you told you he had just been slightly annoyed and didn't really care to go back again.

IT DOESN'T MATTER ALL THAT MUCH TO YOU.  The subject just wasn't touched, ever, and that was perfectly cool.  He’s been acting a bit too moody though.  And as much as John Egbert can be a real asshole, he doesn't get moody, he is almost always coolly above his emotions.  He’s been grinding his teeth and stomping his feet a lot though.  He really, really, didn't want to go with his father.

But you really, really needed to.

There wasn't even a shadow of recognition, not a thought for whoever he had met all those years ago.  You would be fine with that person not being linked to you.  You aren't so fine with that person being forgotten.

So today, you are going to ditch Egbert.  It should be simple enough since apparently you've already bested him.  Well, to tell the truth there wasn't all that much to his best, he’d just stayed in his seat in the car, thudding his head against the dashboard.  For someone who had given the distinct impression to want you outside at all times, he is sure putting a damper on your mood.

You adjust your shades, the ones John had offered you a while ago and which you almost never wear.  Hey about those glasses, just why do you dislike them again?

…

You aren't too sure which reply you want to give to such a question.  There was something quite comforting about those joke glasses, the ones that should have been too ironic to wear.  Maybe it was some sort of shield?  You weren't the big joke with those things on, they were.  These are just ridiculously serious and high fashion and shit.  Alright so maybe they weren't all that bad, maybe you wanted to go out and buy some sunglasses.  It’s not as if you could ever decide what you would purchase back at home.

Though as it turns out, the ones you continuously picked out would surely be the ones your brother would want you to have.

You don’t know how to feel about this.  You do know how you feel about these expensive shades though.  You don’t… want _them to break._   You want to keep this one pair intact!  You don’t like putting them on, they should be CHERISHED, unlike what you had done with the last pair he had offered you.  You know this is unfair, you know those Stiller sunglasses had gone through it all with you and that it sure meant a lot.  But their breaking had also signified the breaking of your life pattern.  You don’t want out of your current life pattern!

Sure, it was hard, you felt like a total waste of space most of the time, and right now John is being a baby, but this is where you want to be for the rest of your life, next to the person you love the most.  So sometimes they are childish, then you can just get away, like you’re doing right now.  You make a turn for the left, towards that insanely stupid maze.

It’s way too big.  You think people pay to go in there?  You’re probably supposed to pay too, but you never do.  Maybe your brother had handled that in the past, maybe Mr. Egbert did…  It’s really pretty fucking stupid, it feels like HOME though.

Your precious camera is on in no time and you snap randomly, without any technique whatsoever, and once again you doubt your motivations to make this out to be a career.  You carry on anyway.  Everything is slightly brown from your perspective, but maybe it’s better this way, maybe you won’t need to be let down by the lack of GOLD.  You are racing through anyway, probably taking blurry pictures, inhaling deeply with every sharp turn you make.  The soil scrunches in a pleasantly melodious way as you carry on, fully aware of how brightly the sun is shining. 

You’re possibly alright with this.  Possibly, the events of your life haven’t caught up to you yet, it is also a possibility that if you keep running through this maze, you can also keep running through your life and stay out of heartbreaking situations.

There aren't any problems.  Not a single one.  All of them have been SWEPT AWAY. 

Just as the random clicking of your camera has been swept away with the upcoming wind.  Wind that not only stirs the labyrinth into life but also brings forth the call of your name.

“Dave, wait up!”

You wouldn't have ever dreamed that his voice calling out your name would become something…  Regular or normal.  So you feel quite invincible as you dash away from his voice instead, still snapping out centered pictures of the clouds, the crops, the everything.

Plus, he was positively darkening your mood with his little mood swings.  You weren't about to wait for him.

“Let’s not do this,” he laughs in such a way you can tell he has sped up as well.

You two might as well be the only ones in this maze.

You try to get farther away from his voice though, his laughter mostly.  Maybe laughter has always hurt you to a certain point.

You think, it was probably why you were prone to go along with your brother’s requests to stay at home.  As much as he took everything lightly, your bro didn't laugh.  At school, laughter was continuous, and no matter what you did or told yourself, it always felt as if it were aimed towards you.

You snap a picture of the trail, pretending you had just successfully ran away from all the laughter that could have been directed towards you during the course of your life.

“Dave!”

You turn left again, clutching the camera closer to your frame.

You’re running away from that thought that maybe your name has grown useless.  A person with lack of identity is not worthy of a name, right?  You’d pretended too long and now all you can do is run.

“Seriously, Dave?” His voice rings out one last time, silently edging towards panic.

You keep running for a few more beats.  You are running from that distinct knowledge that you will end up quite alone, just as lonely as your brother had always appeared to be.  Then you stop, predictably.

There is no worth to RUNNING from these problems when you can actually FIX them.  John won’t laugh at you and he’ll always call you Dave no matter what and most importantly…  He’s there with you.

“John?”

There is no reply, because, let’s face it, you never learned to raise your voice, even when you had freed it up enough to communicate, it had been meager at best.

You retrace your steps, adding more energy to your strides, not knowing at all if this was the right direction.  You thought of the relief you had felt when you had stumbled upon his spot as a child.  You call his name again.  You think of the joy you had felt when HE had been the one to stumble upon your spot of the internet.  You shout as best as you can and you come to understand that everything John has brought to your life has been absolutely positive.  Everything he has brought has been part of the BEST.

The wind picks up again and the damn expensive glasses go flying, you catch a sight of red from your clothes as you squeeze your eyes shut.  You are reminded of Greek Mythology and the Princess Ariadne who had offered some guy or another red thread as to find his way out of the labyrinth.

You’re not a princess, though you had been locked up for so long.  You’re not a princess and you've never been one to show the way out.  You’re Dave Strider and right now you want to be found in the same way that you had found him first.

“John!”

You jump at the force of your voice, but your eyes remain closed.

When he answers, you can tell it’s directly in front of you, though many feet away.  But still, right here, at such an angle that, were you to open your eyes, you could smile and accept the smile he would surely return.

“Dave, phew,” he sighs brightly.

Then many things happen.  The wind whooshes with terrible violence and something else entirely whooshes out of you.  The wind never reaches you, and its imminent song comes to a halting stop, somewhere in between the both of you.  It’s when you open your eyes that you try to understand the happening.  The corn plants seem stuck in that very same bent shape a whoosh of wind would provoke, but the wind has stopped and, you must face it, time has too.

The second thing you are able to notice despite the forceful headache imposed by the sun’s rays is John and how he too seems to be above this time thing.  He has noticed it too, grand blue eyes blinking with fervor as he seemed to recognize you for the very first time.  You can’t tell if he really has.  You can’t tell if he remembers you.  You can’t even tell what the gaze means exactly.

But you’re running again, to meet him this time.  And when you are supposed to stop, you continue.  He probably wasn't expecting the impact, but somehow he doesn't budge at all and simply catches you in his arms.  And when your faces line up perfectly and you melt right into the kiss, you sort of begin to suspect that he had been struck by the same idea as well.

Later if he asks about the tears that had surely touched his cheeks, you would blame it on photophobia and sunlight and…  You wouldn't peg it on that one look of recognition, on that one hope that after all this time, it was STILL true love.


	11. Chapter 11

** XXI **

  


Your name is John Egbert, you are now TWENTY-ONE YEARS OLD and    //    you just DON’T KNOW how you agreed to this.

This is NOT how you had imagined his bedroom.  Granted, there hadn't been that much imagination involved on your part as you had pretty much caught glimpse of every angle of his bedroom at every time of the day over your webcam.  So really, all there is to note here is your inability to catch on to quite TROUBLING details.

The…  WINDOWLESS WINDOW?  You don’t know how to put it, there had been a window there, you know so, but now it was but a gaping hole.  This wasn't the only shocking aspect of it however, you had quite clearly remembered the reddened sky you could see from your spot at your computer.  You think you do anyway, maybe it was a trick of your mind, maybe you just wanted the skies to match up with his eyes.  Anyhow, you had NOT expected the vibrant blue spot of sky that welcomed you into the bedroom.

The rest was pretty average.  Really!  All of the furniture and wires and shit, but…  One small, little detail.  The disturbing detail.  The one that provoked a chain reaction in your memory.  YES, there was such a thing on the video window, you had just never really LOOKED at it.

At first, you had thought you would PASS OUT at the sight of the birds.  Just, crows, everywhere, and there is no longer any question as to why the room isn't dusty as it has so many occupants.  It fills you with DREAD to be completely honest.  They are quite unsettling birds and they had all shifted their beady eyes to you as you had passed the threshold, though they did not scamper away as you walked in.  They looked so UNFEELING and DETACHED, and you were dizzy thinking of them as Dave’s companions.

Let’s get one thing straight, you did NOT fall for his ploy, not even for a mere second.  Wanting to grab some things from his bro’s place before leaving for college?  Ha fucking ha, right?  You’d gone with it anyway, because there is such a thing as CLOSURE and a person like Dave deserves it.  He deserves all the closure in the world, all of it.

Yes, you were a bit scared, terrified really.  It wasn't necessarily the sort of closure that settled his walking out of his guardian’s life, perhaps it was the sort of closure that settled his walking out of YOUR life.  How could you have the upper hand over the man who had brought him up anyway?  You can’t.  So you agreed shakily and with a broken heart.

That fear was wiped clear about an hour ago.  Or two hours, you don’t know.

You’d driven him all the way here and it took way too long and you guys took way too many breaks and just maybe you had the time of your lives.  He had guided you across the city, as if these memories were from yesterday and not from two years ago.  You suppose there are certain things you can’t forget, _you can’t forget a lifetime_ , that just doesn't make sense.  You had breathed a happy sigh as you parked in front of the high rise apartment.

Then he had just--  FROZEN UP.

You've witnessed it so many times before, let’s not mention the first few years when barely a few words could make it past his lips.  This time was much, much, much different.  Even when you’d touched his skin; that too had been icy.

His spine turned metallic or something, he just sat up straight as you unbuckled yourself and his face shifted into the hardest variation of his poker face.  You must have left him be for fifteen good minutes before confronting him.

“We don’t have to do this if you want,” you’d urged him gently.

That was about the moment when it hit you that it would be fruitless to worry about him running back home, he was clearly terrified of the place or what it held.  (you can understand this as you keep staring at the grim birds hopping around his childhood belongings)

In the car, he’d pinched his lips together, only slightly, as if taking the time to decide what he wanted to reply with.  He never did though.  And as any other time that his lips crossed your mind, you leaned in for a kiss.  And he’d clung on to you like some drowning puppy, being generally more responsive than he was on an any other average occurrence.  After a whole lot of that, he swallowed thickly, readjusted those damn expensive shades, and unbuckled himself as well.

You don’t think you two are a thing or anything, not really!  Well, it’s been about like…  Exactly a year since you've first kissed.  And you've kissed a lot since then, maybe too much (but not enough, not really).  It’s not like you've ever spoken about it?  It’s just this thing that spontaneously happens, and then it doesn't.  Maybe now, when your dreams hurt you just a bit too much, you do wake up with Dave’s head on your chest, but…  But it’s not a thing?

It’s unspoken anyway.  And you are pretty sure your heart is supposed to belong to some other boy who you know nothing of. 

So you DON’T talk about it, but you kiss him a lot and hope for the best.

You are still doing that by the way, because that was just the most awkward reunion you have ever seen.  And that’s coming from you, the one who is always messy when meeting Dave after long periods of time.  Dave had ended up saying nothing prior to entering the building and then Dirk had managed to say nothing at all when the two of you showed up at his door.  You had babbled for just so long and tried your best to recite the text you had prepared for this, but obviously you weren't quite prepared enough as you did not guess this development.  Who does that?  Who says nothing upon seeing the only member of their family after two years apart?

Striders do.

You had retreated to his bedroom, hoping they would open their hearts and be honest while you were gone.  You doubt it will happen.

There really is nothing you can touch in this room.  These crows are just freaking you out, okay?  And you keep getting the flashes of memory, highlighting just which crows you had seen when during which conversations.  You had been so blind!!!  You are supposedly the one with the good eyes, but, guess not.  You suppose you would need vision EIGHTFOLD, that would make things easier, you think…

You eventually decide to sit down on his unmade bed, totally uncertain of how to kill time.  You think his brother probably left everything just the way it was the day he had gone off.  You feel a bit nauseated…  The crows caw and you sigh.  You had felt quite ALONE throughout your life: true.  You can’t imagine the loneliness in Dave’s life: also true.

There was just something so bitter about a young boy sitting down with a pack of crows, a murder the proper term calls for.  It’s sinister at best and tragic at worst. 

You are suddenly overwhelmed with this blessing, the possibility of being his one good friend.  It feels almost MONUMENTAL for an instant.  Your thoughts and recollections blur together all at once, you hadn't thought of ever making it to his room, but here you are.  And it’s so heartwarming.

Everything here has been owned and touched by Dave Strider.  The light here is really nice too.  It mustn't have been when it got to the point of a barred window and fiery skies, but it was peaceful now.  Things mostly seemed black with the outline of the blue sky.  The cawing was a bit soft and lullaby-like as well.

You can imagine him spending his days alone up here, the highest apartment in this block, towering over the city.  Foolishly, you think of just how high, and just how frightful it would have been to have jumped as he had once suggested.  You hope that never turns up to be a suggestion ever again.  You imagine that on some days he might have felt artistic inspiration, he might have felt powerful alone up here.

You imagine that most days he must have felt heavy with solitude.

So you wonder just HOW ALONE HE MUST FEEL at this instant.  You can’t tell, you don’t know what is going on out there.  You assume his brother’s voice must be just as soft-spoken, after all Dave had picked up an awful lot from him.  Perhaps they are sitting in complete silence.  Perhaps Dave’s heart is breaking messily and perhaps he needs to be KISSED AGAIN.

You sneak your way back to the door, careful not to disturb any of the somber animals and throwing a last glance at the windowless window and the spot of pure blue.  You push the door ajar and stop there, because you can hear Dave’s voice.  You don’t see them, but…  You would never risk to cut his voice off!  Despite what he may claim of his progress, any long speech from him was quite the delicate rarity.

“It’s just so frustrating, because I remember every single day.  Yet it feels like there is this great gap, like I've lost entire years of memories.”

You practically melt into the door in attempt to catch any sort of different accent or nuance in his voice.  This was the first time you heard anything like this from him.

You are suddenly a tad WORRIED, you guess this is a pretty common feeling you get around Dave.

Biting the inside of your cheek, you mull over his words.  Yeah, yeah there were a lot of days you had forgotten, mnemophobia perhaps?  That would be pretty romantic, the photophobic and the mnemophobic, everything that had to do with light and memory, that seemed romantic to you anyway.

Then you remember that he is certainly not your FIRST LOVE and maybe romance just isn't a thing that is part of this.

“I never thought you’d forgotten.”

The gravelly voice takes you by surprise, you had never heard Dirk speaking.

A long sobering silence follows up his words, Dave is surely pulling the same conclusions as you.  Whatever may it be that he had forgotten, Dirk knew of it and had honestly thought it was but a simple memory.

Your head hurts, you don’t really want to hear about this.

“I thought all four of you kids had unscratched memories of it,” he completes as Dave’s silence became too deafening.

You swallow harshly, you know you’re included before Dave has time to confirm it.

“EB, TT and GG?” His voice shakes as he refuses to speak any of your full names.

You’re shaking too probably, why are you a part of this conversation?  This isn't anything that you had imagined.  A bird caws behind you, you swallow as best as you can.

“I thought you had just decided to keep us in the dark.”

The use of ‘us’ rings a bell, but it’s so distant, you don’t know how this has anything to do with you.

“Trust me, I've always been more in the dark than you,” he bites back.

A completely different bell rings.  Snappy was an adjective you used for Dave a lot, right?  Or it had been at the very beginning.  When was that again?  His ironic take of his brother’s sentence shocks you a bit.  For someone who had been so frozen…  Well, that looked like a terrible lie as of now.

“What do you remember anyway bro?”

“I don’t.  I don’t remember the game at all.”

You've been kicked.  You've been kicked, air has escaped you.  You know what it was with Dirk’s choice of words.

But this game is something you feel it is time for you to remember.

You don’t want to though, so you go back and collapse into Dave’s bed, forcing yourself to shove aside fleeting impressions that were all wrong.

 

 

 

 

Your name is Dave Strider, you are also TWENTY-ONE YEARS OLD and    //    you are trying to come CLEAN.

You probably should have capitalized ‘trying’ instead, because it is definitely the keyword.  Maybe it isn't working super well because it wasn't exactly your initial intention.  Oh wow, this is making you look better and better, isn't it?  Alright, well, at least you are aware of your true subconscious needs, but then again you can’t take too much credit as you are positive Rose helped you decipher most of THAT.

Somewhere, deep down inside of you (or maybe not so deep after all), you desperately need your older brother’s approval.  He had sort of manufactured you, yeah, you guess you can put it that way.  You were sort of a product of what he had calculated would be best for you and now that you are changing it, you just really want for him to look down at you and to nod his head.  Tell you; yeah that’s good too.

Or something stupid like that.

And John, bless his soul, had gone right along with it.  He hadn't taken the bait, almost surprisingly, but you predict he thinks you are doing the thing you have previously claimed, ‘COMING CLEAN’.  You can’t begin to comprehend how such a great person can have any faith in you, but somehow he does.  John is almost everything to you though, so you shove that wish for acceptance aside for the trip and you two are completely free, free as you had wanted to be when you had stomped out of that stupid apartment.

For some reason you are flying right back to your locked tower.

Stupid, stupid, dumb.

What is WRONG with you?

You suppose asking for his approval, no matter how ironically or subtly you make it out to be, doesn't turn out at all as you could have imagined it to be.  You HAVEN’T imagined it, because that would be lame, but nonetheless…

You’d almost broken down, backed out of it once you had seen the dreaded place and remembered just how high up the place you once lived in was.  You wanted to take the easy way out, forget about the approval, of any form of confrontation, go on with your life as you had recently done.  John had been there with you however and he might have just pressed his lips to yours and it sort of reminded you that you also needed some approval about something else.

So…  So you are pretty sure all of the homoerotic subtext back at home was your brother’s idea of ultimate irony?  You mean, you never felt for an instant that he actually liked ponies and all of the stupidly pink things he keeps stashed away in closets.  But you’re not sure how he is going to take to THIS.  Not that THIS is anything, but it’s been long established you can’t have romantic feelings for anyone else but John Egbert.   You’re making too much out of nothing, probably.  Your brother could have legit reasons for disapproving of you and your ways, and homosexuality was nowhere near the top of that list.

…  Actually, you want him to tell you that you are good enough for someone like John, because you can’t convince yourself of that singlehandedly.

Well, you made it to the apartment’s door _somehow_.  He’d looked at you first and…  Well, you've gathered no data about that.  But then John had opened his mouth, and he had looked at him instead.  And his posture went from ‘ _Oh so this is Mister Perfect_ ’ to ‘ _This is the boy you want to bang?’_

How?  It must be bro superpowers or something, surely you would have had the same had you been the older brother instead.

John DESERTED you after that, and things became just even the slightest bit harder to handle.  Your brother took off his shades, those stupidly pointed ones, the ones he had worn for so long as sign of solidarity towards you, even when you’d ditched the pair he had assigned to you for the Stiller ones.  You don’t really remember him ever taking them off, but there and then his irises were revealed to be pleasantly amber like, almost golden, and you’d swallowed down the strangeness that was crawling up your digestive system.  He was terribly attractive without the gimmick glasses on and you silently wondered once more how he had possibly turned out this way.  You imagine him being some normal person, who didn't think they had to be the epitome of coolness and it’s truly frightening to think of how normal he could be.

YOU however will never be normal and the sense of solidarity grips you tightly with renewed force.

That is, once John had escaped and he had removed the eyewear, you discovered that you could read him with different clues than simple posture.  His eyes read it so clearly.  He didn't only see John as the Mr. Perfect from your online world or your current heart’s interest, he had also pinned him down as a certain boy who had dragged Dave Strider back to him when he had been weeping in the middle of nowhere.

You don’t take your shades off, even if the skies of Austin are nothing like you remember them to be, because if Dirk is finally willing to lay out his cards face up, you are no longer playing that game. 

“I see how it is,” he establishes after a moment of silence.

You’d refused to explain yourself for just SO LONG and now you are even FREER with the knowledge that you won’t ever need to explain it to him.  He saw how it was, he finally could see why you heavily insisted on returning to the damn place in California.  It hadn't been about returning to the place where you had completely brought shame to the Strider household (not much of a household) , it was about wanting to meet someone again.

And you had.

When he smiles, you don’t stop your own, it’s incredibly ODD.  You are able to not actually TWIST your face into the smiling position, it is a genuine motion, yet it is your HEART that twists.  Shared smiles had been long forgotten in this place.  You suppose that at first spending so much time with your brother and learning everything about him had been EXCITING.  But when you forced it down so much, treated your nerves too lightly as you obliged yourself to BECOME him, it had taken all of the positive energy away.  The return of the COMPLICITY and SOLIDARITY almost upset your stomach.

He is really happy that you had had the force to find John; though you don’t tell him how much of the finding John had actually done.  And you are EXTREMELY happy that he can see it under such a light.

After that, it almost spirals out of control, you speak quickly and shortly on how you had longed to be FREE and he nodded his head, only slightly, but in the way you had hoped he would.  You tell him about PHOTOGRAPHY, and he cuts you off, telling you he still kept up with your websites.  This means many things of course; this means he understands your plans for your future studies, but also knows the full extent of your abilities. 

It also means he had been doing the same as you had done, stalking your traces on the internet in moments when he should have been doing something else.  Once again, you feel the two of you are part of a whole, it is superb that you are able to feel this way after all this time, because that had been something you had thought you had lost at the age of fourteen.  It had always been complicated and messy, the roles you played in each other’s lives, now it seems stupid to even think of it.

When this particular segment of the conversation stalled, you’d hung your head.

“I can pay your way lil’ man,” he said after a while.

You were relieved to the extent that he understood that you were still hung up about this future college thing, yet that wasn't it at all.  So you’d shaken your head lightly, almost sighing.

“There should be no problem.”

He hadn't specified if he was still speaking of the money or not, but you knew he wasn't.  You knew that this time, he’d pinned down the problem.  You knew that he had faith in you and your success.

But, soon, you confronted the messy things, the feelings you could never quite place and he’d told you these were part of his world too.  Not only the Strider world, but also John, and Rose, and Jade, and maybe other people Dirk had never spoken of?

It became CONFUSING then and your head had THROBBED as the pieces tried to slide back together, you were keeping them apart though.

“Maybe I should stay,” you said eventually.

The idea had never crossed your mind, but suddenly the image of John, just the mention of his name, aggravated the headache.  Perhaps if you still had not remembered, it would be for the best to stay away from triggers.

“You can’t.”

Your heart sank; you were no longer invited to stay here.  Then again, you actually knew what this was about.  You actually knew your brother was trying to push you into the right direction, he’d always done as much.  You shouldn't be prone to trusting him, you should see that the ways he sometimes pushes you into end up HURTING YOU A LOT.  But after the revelation that he understood a lot more of the MESS you had both been involved in, you can’t help but to feel the need to listen to his instructions.

“Do you really think it’s such a good idea?” _for you to keep close to John Egbert_

You hadn't guessed the movement until his shades were firmly back into place.  You weren't so sure what this could symbolize; the break in solidarity?  The confession that your situations were much different this time?  You think so, you think so with the way his jaw locks, the way his eyebrows draw together.  You know so, because essentially, you share the same face.  The pigmentation is really the exception here, now that you are an adult, you understand that he is almost your REFLECTION.

“What if you had to go a lifetime without him?”

You want to answer that, or even to think it over, there is no such opportunity as he adds another question.

“What if you had already gone a lifetime without him?”

Your heart is apparently not done sinking, however you have little to no idea where it could possibly move to, for it suddenly feels  constricted in your being.  This headache is far superior from the typical one, these memories are farther away from you.  These memories do not even feel like your own, you don’t want them.

His voice breaks you out of the movement you had not known you had indulged in.  Your hand had snuck to your neck and your nails had dug into your skin painfully.  There was something you absolutely needed to avoid in this particular topic, you can’t remember though.

“Dave, this time you can, so go ahead.”

You want to thank him, to question him about whatever other life you had gone through, you don’t.

“Is there someone missing from your life this time?”

The formulation of this thought seems  off, even to you, but it should be good enough.

He shrugs lightly in response. 

“Why is that?”

He turns away from you slightly and you understand that this reunion is quickly coming to an end, and perhaps you are absolutely fine with that.  But you stay glued into place until he furnishes an answer.

“I guess he was just in the wrong generation.”

Your head is pounding.  This is a line you could have used.  You know exactly what he is speaking of, yet you don’t.  You can say you’ve secured him back into your life, but you don’t waste efforts on attempts to console him or to further exchange.

You flee into your bedroom, because this overwhelming need to see John has taken over you.

You hadn't realized you had stopped breathing until you caught sight of him, amidst the passing crows.


	12. Chapter 12

**XXII **

  


Your name is JOHN EGBERT.  You are TWENTY-TWO YEARS OLD.

//

Sometimes you remember that you are supposed to think that you are a truly HORRIBLE PERSON.  Mostly, you forget because you are unexplainably happy.  School is AMAZING.  And somehow, people get along with you!  You are considered as very BRIGHT and PASSIONATE and people almost seem to flock to you, and GOSH does this feel so new to you.  It’s not even that important, because you have three AWESOME FRIENDS who seem to understand EVERYTHING you have ever felt.  One of those friends you get to hold in your arms day after day.  So you don’t ever feel quite lonely or sad enough to remember that you’re horrible, _almost_.

Your life is almost a FAIRYTALE, but only almost.  You know, everything is MOSTLY perfect.  And you should probably be satisfied with that, that’s more than what most people get!

But then sometimes you do remember that you are just DESPICABLE.  And you feel as if you must do something to right your wrongs.

It is possible that you could have avoided this problem, probably not though. You don’t know what the real difference was between your bedroom back at home and the dorm room you share with Dave, but…  It had taken a few days maybe for you two to completely fuck up the sleeping arrangement.

Sure, you can blame it on the bed bunk’s disposition, you’d gone years with the possibility of simply glancing downward to convince yourself that Dave was breathing safely, and now there he was sleeping up there on the top mattress, where you couldn't reach.  You could also blame it on your nightmares, the terrors that just would never leave your inner realm of sleep, and how it did happen from time to time back at home that Dave would lay with you to help you forget.  So it had been perfectly excusable that you had called out for him and you had clung on to him, even if the mattress was considerably less larger.  And NATURALLY maybe that in your sleep induced state you had claimed some foolish things and that afterwards he just wouldn't DARE not return to your side to sleep.

That’s all jolly good of course, and you could almost pass it off as nothing.  But as soon as it had gone from sleeping together to, erm, ACTUALLY _sleeping together_ , there wasn't much you could say in your defense.  But then again, it entered in your category of things you never spoke aloud of.  So it was hard to determine, and as far as you’re concerned, if someone were to find out, you could probably call it casual sex.  However, nothing is ever exactly CASUAL with Dave.  It’s always these multilayered plains of nonsense and meaning.  It’s always a lot more than what he lets it on to be.   That is pretty FRIGHTENING considering that he does act as if this particular thing means a lot.

His collection of comical sunglasses has grown a lot recently.  Most of the students would laugh at this little running gag, were it not for his reinforced impassible façade, once again he has fallen back into the category of ‘COOL KID’.  However, as soon as he returns to your room at the end of the day, whatever glasses he has picked out end up discarded and a peaceful smile will stretch across his face.

He is VERY open with you and you don’t quite understand it.

Maybe, possibly, you two have more than a thing going on here.  And he does not feel the need to establish it with words, it’s just there.  You NEED for him to say something though, and so, yesterday, when you’d had him pinned down underneath you despite your outbursts of giggles and smiles, which seem to be very popular when you are in serious and overheated predicaments, and he had indeed said something, with wide opened eyes…

Yeah, his eyes.  His pupils had been dilated to the point that it was hard to tell his eyes suffered from a special condition, but the alarming ring of red could not be missed.  When he stared at you unblinkingly, which he never really did elsewhere than in the shadows, your stomach liked to do interesting things.  After all this time, he still looked like an untouchable being, someone for whom you held unlimited respect and reverence.  But all and the same, it looked like he also perceived himself as UNTOUCHABLE, someone who was set aside from the rest.  And so, being with him, touching him, catching his gaze was ultimately very special.  It was as if you acquired the right to interact with someone who seemed out of your world entirely, but it also looked like as if he thought he was given the outmost important chance to come close to someone.

In the end, no matter what it was, if he was involved it was EXHILARATING and all such a RUSH.

So really, going at it night after night really hasn't dimmed the appeal of having his hands tugging at your hair or of your long fingers finding the nicks in his skin given by shitty swords he should have been more careful with.  Most of the time, you lose the ability to really LISTEN, your eardrums seem to cave in with the presence of what can only be qualified as MAGIC.  So you don’t ever hear the sounds he makes, which might as well since he is mostly incoherent in those instants.  You like to think he hasn't used his vocal cords enough in his lifetime and thus they quaver under any sort of pressure.  That is, as has been noted, you tend to laugh when you are being intimate.  You laugh when your hands are in his pants or vice versa, you laugh when your oversized teeth clonk against his, you laugh when he holds on to you with too much force, you laugh when it feels good, and it always does, so really it’s a bit incessant. 

You don’t think it bothers him all too much.  Anyhow, it hasn't kept him from coming back to your side on a nightly basis.  But this time, he spoke above the almost anesthetic buzzing in your ears and he’d put a nice stop to your fits of overly elated giggles.

“John-“

It was almost funny how you’d almost missed the following words and therefore almost missed the mess you are currently in.  You were stomached with the use of your name, not because it was a rarity, though it was, a tiny bit, it still occurred from time to time…  But because you were pulled back to the very first time you had video chatted.  You recalled the same way the smile of your lips had shed off completely when he had used your name back then.  It had been the first time you had seen his face, or heard his voice, or had him say your name out loud.  But not really.

_Not really…_

You’d opened your mouth at the same time as he continued, with the foremost knowledge that you were about to do something unimaginable, you were about to REMEMBER.

“I love you,” he finished with his vacant stare.

And all vestiges of remembering, of calling forth things you’d both forgotten fell apart as your mouth could not shut itself, but nor could it form words.

Maybe it should have been a given.  Maybe that all things considered, you could have easily pulled the conclusion at least ten million times.  You probably should have known that ‘casual sex’ wasn’t really a thing that would fit into Dave Strider’s lifestyle.  You know, someone who’d remained locked in all by himself for so long probably wouldn’t have been one for those sorts of things.  He would probably be, and is, the sort of person who would only dare open up and open his eyes with someone he honestly LOVES.

This, however, was precisely what reminded you that YOU, JOHN EGBERT, THINK and KNOW that you are basically HORRIBLE.

You had been extremely grateful when he had shut his eyes after that and did not open them again.  At first, it felt as if he had removed a clutch or something, it was destabilizing to have the heartbreaking eyes gone, but at the same time, you felt a bit safer.  Nonetheless, you were overcome with fear, and so, it was practically violently that you held him afterwards, and without any sort of laughter.

When he’d turned away from you afterwards, eyes still squeezed shut, you knew he wasn't sleeping.  You also hoped you could pretend that you hadn't heard a thing.

Today has proven otherwise.  Of course, you have zero classes in common.  It had even been a hassle to arrange for the two of you to share the room, what with the major difference in studies and levels, but nothing extra fees couldn't solve.  Time apart was what you needed, and thankfully you already had daily doses of this.  However, it was much too difficult to pretend you hadn't heard a thing when the words kept drumming down on your thoughts, as the steady beats of rain would.

‘I love you’ _you’re terrible  
_ ‘I love you’ _you’re terrible  
_ ‘I love you’ _you’re terrible_

The cycle wasn't breaking off.  So you decided that if the cycle couldn't break, THIS WOULD BE your BREAKING POINT.

An ACCUMULATION if you will, of all the hatred you had directed to yourself but had refused to acknowledge.

It came up a lot.  When you’d cross him on campus on a sunny day, and the rays of sun would bounce off his hair and glint GOLDENLY.  When he’d wear one of the pairs of sunglasses that were rimmed GOLD, just like the first pair you had offered him.  When he’d stall near the window of your room and you could almost imagine a GOLDEN aura.

Gosh, you were just the WORST.  And after all these years, you still couldn't help associating Dave to the person you had dubbed to be your FIRST LOVE.  It fucking blows; you hadn't thought you were still trying to make him fit the role, but your eyes begged to differ.  Your eyes wanted him to be the BOY MADE OF LIGHT and not the BOY MADE OF SNOW. 

It had taken you all day to come to the conclusion that you had to tell him.  You felt you were cheating him in the memory by keeping this to yourself.  You just had to COME CLEAN, admit that you had tried your best to bite it down, but just couldn't.

This is precisely why you have obliged Dave to sit down on the lower bed, the bed you SHARED, and pushed his studying and homework aside in the hopes to discuss it.  Also why you are pacing nervously and not saying a word at all.  Not the best of strategies, to speak frankly.

“Dave,” you start bravely and brightly…

But it dies out as he slides in a simple “What’s up?” to answer his name.

He isn't helping at all, possibly things would be better and easier if he were just not to speak at all.  You withdraw your breath with the memory of the absolutely LONG period of time in which he was quite quiet.

You whip around to face him, to somehow erase the thought, though it had not even been uttered.  But your eyes land on him and the ridiculously oversized neon blue sunglasses he is sporting and your mouth runs dry.

“Would you take those off?” You demand shortly, knowing full well he had the bad habit of simply going with whatever you told him to do.

This was a bit WORRISOME actually, he hadn't tossed them aside yet.  You’re suddenly quite terrified with the way you have been handling things, you don’t want him to shut you out.  While you were busy breathing a sigh of relief that he just wasn't talking about ‘THE THING’, he had probably obsessively waited for YOU to say something.

And you are about to.

As soon as he takes off the glasses, which he hasn't yet.  All he’s done is readjust them slightly, keeping the posture of someone who was defiant while not really caring that much after all.  He was still the cool kid, but you weren't really interested in that.  You were interested in DAVE and how butt hurt he tends to get.

“Would you just take those off?” You giggle stiffly as you pause your pacing.

You see the smug grin that twists his lips and you decide you can laugh a bit more genuinely at that.  He moves to take them off, but pauses, smiling wider with the way your eyes had followed the movement robotically.

“Take them off, I’m trying to tell you I love you!” You argue energetically, happy to forget for a moment that YOU, ARE, HORRIBLE.

Predictably, he lowers the glasses, melodramatically being who he was, and gives you an expectant look.  It was funny how expressive you found his eyes to be.  It was funny, because if you were to make abstraction of it, he indeed had a natural bland, expressionless thing going.  His eyes were a different story entirely.  So sometimes, when you’re in public, you like to imagine the sorts of things his eyes are doing behind the shades, and just how involved he could appear to be with the conversation.

His eyes were reading; _Egbert speak now or I am going to murder you._

“So, remember that place in California we went to like two years ago?” You exclaim all in one breath, deciding to backtrack into your plan of already prepared lines.

His eyes switch to panic mode.  You ignore this.

“John let’s not—“

“It’s just, I mean, I went there when I was really young.  And I sort of fell in love with someone back then, but you know, I still love them now.  But I haven’t seen them since!  And I love you, but yeah…  What I’m saying is that I loved someone before you and yeah, just, sorry.”

Well that wasn't too difficult.  Verbal diarrhea, but no, not so difficult.

“John.”

It’s your turn to shut your eyes.  Things could go either way now, but what you are expecting is that you will be needed to reveal your whole story and that it will be extremely powerful and—

“You’re an idiot.”

Then again, blatant rejection was also a possibility.

Your name is John Egbert, you think of yourself as horrible, and you had this one coming.

 

 

 

Your name is DAVE STRIDER.  You are TWENTY-TWO YEARS OLD.

//

Your world is turning out to be WORDLESS, paved with conquered fears, unspoken aspirations, boundless lethargy, timed contemplation, and sobering doses of love.  You like your world, it feels very large and opened to even larger paths.  You are beginning to like who you are, even if it's only a little.  You suppose you've come a long way and that might be admirable to some extent.  You also happen to be in love with this inexhaustible force of nature, who is always radiating happiness, even when you can tell there is something underneath it.  So, you like things as they are.  You like to think you are moving forward, you are bettering yourself and things will get better as a whole.

Of course, with John there are always words involved and right now it’s…  Almost FUNNY actually.  There are ways for you to restrain this avalanche of words coming from him, surely you will soon, right now you are watching him panic.  Words aren't your favorite things, so you are letting things blow over before saying anything.

“Gosh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

He’s babbling on about something, but you can’t be sure if he’s switched topics yet or not.  His tone is intoxicatingly APOLOGETIC.  There is actually no apology needed, so you just sit there and wait for a clear shot to finally limit his words.

It never comes, so you speak his name, his first name, and as every other time you have done as much, he quickly finishes off his word and stares at you bewilderedly.  You wonder if he does this with anyone else who uses his name, you find it to be oddly charming.

“You are telling me,” you exhale deeply to keep your composure up, “That you contacted me after seeing that I held a certain attachment to the maze.  You later found out that I was basically paralyzed without appropriate eyewear.  That we kissed in the stupid maze; and that somehow, that doesn't translate to some kid you met there who was crawling and crying about his lost shades?”

“Yes, no, I’m sorry?  It’s not like…  Yes, okay, at first I thought I could pretend you were him.  But that was only at first, I know that’s stupid!”

You are FLABBERGASTED.

“No, that’s not stupid, but you are.”

When this conversation had begun, approximately five minutes ago, this had not been what you were expecting.  Sure, you might have expected this discussion to eventually turn up, but this was never how it was staged in your mind.  He could have been refusing to gather the evidence, he could have been keeping it bottled up…  That was, alright, you guess.  But you two had RECOGNIZED each other out there, a few years ago already, he shouldn't ‘not be getting’ what you’re saying.  That is absolutely senseless, yet…

“It doesn't really matter anyway.  Gosh, I just, shouldn't have told you.  Only, I wanted to tell you how much I loved you too, but…  I am still so terrible.”

You’re not even going to begin to analyze that, or any of his erratic pacing, you are going to ignore his idiocy because, to be completely honest, your feelings are almost hurt.  YOU’d recognized HIM such a long time ago.  And he still didn't even have a clue.

“The first time we met, we were seven.”

It doesn't get much clearer than this.

“See, no, I’m able to see how that’s not the truth now.  It’s super fine.”

You’re still not paying much attention.  Things are pretty PERFECT and it’s about time he comes to terms with that.

“You asked me _are you okay,_ and I said _‘sup_.”

Cue to the end of his pacing.  Well, better late than never.  However, he’s also stopped breathing.  He’s far gone, gone in thoughts you prefer not to think of.  Gone in those same disgusted looks you sometimes catch him throwing towards his reflection.  The moments in which it truly shines through that he despises himself are the toughest.  They almost FRAZZLE you, you, Dave Strider.

“John, it’s okay, come here.”

What you had intended by those words was for him to find solace in your arms, but this collapsing next to your spot on your shared bed will do just as much.  He still isn't breathing, his hands are fisted tightly, and his eyes are nowhere near meeting yours.  You’d never really gotten over your fascination for his eyes.  The origin of skies and light and color, that’s what it should look like, like his eyes. 

“You okay?”

It’s ample time for role rehearsal, and you can’t help the proud smile you’re sporting, it doesn't matter much as he will probably never see it.

“Uh huh,” he mumbles, overbite completely prominent as he seemed intent to draw blood from his own lips.

Naturally, you lean in to busy his lips with something else entirely; your own.  Somehow, your breath successfully transmits to him and you feel him emerge back into the living, long and agile fingers quickly finding their way in your head of white locks.  Eventually your smile also spreads to him and you feel as if you've successfully balanced things out.

But not entirely, not quite.

“This feels pretty juvenile,” he whispers against your lips.

You sneak a glance at him, but his eyes are still closed, so you don’t waste the efforts to keep yours on his face.  You revert back into a world of darkness and your hands find his lap, clutching on to the piece of light you have always dubbed him to be.

“Just the word I was looking for,” you supply sarcastically, not pulling away in the slightest.

His laughter is the ghost of breath on your lips and you are so scared of him voicing his thoughts on this.  You wouldn't want for anything to SHATTER.  You feel SAFE.  Yet you feel FREE.  This is not a thought combination that should be possible, this wasn't something that should be possible for YOU specifically speaking.  But…  It’s starting to feel as if it is a reality.  If only John can manage not to set fire to the whole thing.

“Having your first love as your true love is a bit too childish, no?”

Your laughter joins his, because there had been absolutely no consulting to this…  Indeed, you've considered him as your true love for a long time now, and apparently he did the same.

“We deserve as much,” but the words are stale in contrast of the laughter you’d been sharing.

You feel an unknown presence behind you, inside of you, you don’t know.  But it feels as if the back of your skull is suddenly wet with something…  It feels as if your head is about to split open.

“What?”

His eyes are wide now, and you realize, so are yours.  You NEED some distance now, but instead you find yourself pulling him closer, your hands now almost claw like on his lap.  There is only a little light that infiltrates itself into your dorm room.  John had installed blinds on the window, and they’re only ever slightly tilted.  And so, you are able to see in your world of relative darkness.  You’d never come to understand how INTIMATE it was until now, breathing in the silence greedily and trying your best to delve deeper into the splitting agony taking over the parameters of your mind.

“Being childish.  We were pretty much robbed of our childhood, right?”

_Right?_

Is that right?

“Sburb.”

The word had fallen from HIS lips, yet it had resounded at the same instant in your head, with just as much abandon as he had used.

 _Yes, that was quite right_.

You want to propel yourself to your feet, run as the memories assault you, instead you collapse.  Your forehead knocks deafly against the spot where his collarbones meet.  You had not realized the cold sweat that had taken refuge over your skin until the contact was made, but by then you are shivering, plagued with an ocean of images involving your corpses.  Perhaps your feet are sweating as well, but to you, you sense it as if blood is pooling at your feet.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

You don’t know who spoke which onomatopoeia; does it matter?  Probably not.  He must have collapsed too.  His head is in the pile of pillows, yours is on his chest, regulating your thoughts to the speed of his breathing.  Suddenly there wasn't much else in the world but the two of you, even though you had suddenly been aggressed with a complete understanding of just how this world came to be.

The laughing is back.  Yours is frightened, but you can’t help but to feel less frightened with his accompanying nostalgic laugh.

You’d done it, the both of you, you’d remembered.  You can’t help but to be extremely thankful that you had not been alone, no one knew just how much damage that could have provoked.  Everything was finally PERFECT.

“We should probably talk to Rose and Jade—“

“Dave?”

His hand is petting your head lightly, you force yourself to understand the words, to hear them and to keep them forever.  You are alright with shutting your eyes for now.  To forget that you have access to colors and lights and so much of John.  You are alright, because you know that once you face the world again, nothing will have changed.  You are alright, because you've gone through SO MUCH, and you know what that so much is, and you’re ready to reap the rewards.  You are ready for the peaceful, happy life.

“Our love is like a fairytale,” he snickers into your ear.

You wonder how he is so light after remembering the countless losses, the constant heartache…  The adventure that could explain all of your actual pet peeves, ambitions, and overall identity.

“No shut up.”

You remember yourself as a child, the child who had not been raised on fairytales, but hoped and dreamed of them regardless.  You remember how John had always been a part of that, how it didn't really depend on the game.  It had always been MEANT TO BE, nothing less, nothing more.

“Dave…”

“Shut up,” you repeat in a softer voice.

You feel him humming, it reverberates through his frame and into your soul.  He probably also feels your tears on that same frame.  There were a lot of things to be said, that much you were sure of.  But for now you wanted to treasure this, accomplishing the impossible, as you had all been able to as teenagers when you could still best games that tore everything from you away. 

You’d REMEMBERED.  And yes, that plan still sounded perfect.  You were going to love as freely as a child would, because you’d EARNED it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you soooo much to everyone who read this!  
> Euh I would like to post lots more of johndave fics and homestuck in general in the future, but I am super shy haha y_y
> 
> Anyway, if any of you want to talk to me, well my tumblr is ~~plinkoid.tumblr.com~~ (oh wow so obvious) so yeah C:

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I love Homestuck and davejohn and aaaaah this is my first time posting anything for this fandom!


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